
Class 
Book 



Ajk. 



SMITHS0NIAN..DEP0S1T 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 
AT ROME 



j^m 



The Education of Children 
AT Rome 



BY 



GEORGE CLARKE, Ph.D. 

Senior Moderator, Trinity College, Dublin 

Principal of Jarvis Hall Academy 

MoNTCLAiR, Colorado 



o444'"^o 



MACMILLAN AND COMPANY 

London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 
1896 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1896, 
By MACMILLAN AND CO. 



J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

In preparing this little treatise, which 
was originally written as a dissertation for 
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 
the University of Colorado, the following 
modern authorities have been consulted. 
It is believed that the list will be found to 
be a nearly complete bibliography of the 
special works on the subject. 

Cramer, F. Geschichte der Erziehung und des 

Unterrichts im Alterthume. (Elberfeld, 

1832.) 
Krause. Erziehung u. s. w. bei den Griechen 

Etruskern und Romern. (Halle, 1851.) 
Becker. Callus. (New York, 1866.) 
Hulsebos. De Educatione apud Romanes. 

(Utrecht, 1867.) 
Ussing. Erziehung- und Unterrichtswesen 

bei den Griechen und Romern. (Altona, 

1870.) 



VI PREFATORY NOTE 

Bergmann. Die Sociale Stellung der Ele- 
mentarlehrer und Grammatiker bei den 
Romern. (Leipzig, 1877.) 

Grasberger. Erziehung und Unterricht im 
klassischen Alterthum. (Wiirzburg, 1867- 
1881.) 

Goll. Kulturbilder aus Hellas und Rom. 
(Leipzig, 1878.) 

Stadelmann. Erziehung und Unterricht bei 
den Griechen und Romern. (Triest, 1 89 1.) 

Stein. Das Bildungswesen der alten Welt. 
(Stuttgart, 1883.) 

Schmid. Geschichte der Erziehung. (Stutt- 
gart, 1884.) 

Saalfeld. Der Griechische Einfluss auf Erzie- 
hung in Rom. (Leipzig, 1882.) 

Linder. Die Erziehung zur Pietas im alten 
Rom. (Leipzig, 1890.) 

To this list must be added the work on 
Pre-Christian Education by Dr. S. S. 
Laurie (Longmans, 1895), which, how- 
ever, did not reach me until the present 
treatise was entirely written. 

I have to thank Dr. Carl W. Belser, 
Professor of Latin in the University of 
Colorado, for kind suggestions and criti- 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. PURPOSE OF EDUCATION AT ROME . I 

II. THE child's EARLIEST TRAINING . 20 

III. SCHOOL-EDUCATION . . -3^ 

IV. SCHOOL BUILDINGS. HOURS OF 

SCHOOL. HOLIDAYS . . .5! 

V. STUDIES IN THE ELEMENTARY 

SCHOOL 71 

VI. THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS . . 94 
VII. PEDAGOGICAL IDEAS OF THE RO- 
MANS 125 

VIII. STATUS OF TEACHERS . . .154 

vii 



EDUCATION OF CHIL- 
DREN AT ROME 

CHAPTER I 

PURPOSE OF EDUCATION AT ROME 

If we wish to form a correct esti- 
mate of the educational system of a 
people, we shall find it useful to be- 
gin by inquiring what the objects 
were which that people desired to 
gain by means of education. Differ- 
ent nations have different educational 
ideals, resulting from their separate na- 
tional characteristics and tastes, which 
in their turn are the consequences of 



2 EDUCATION OF 

the combined influences of race and 
environment. It will not be necessary 
here to inquire into the particular in- 
fluences which made the Romans what 
they were ; we shall merely take them 
as we find them towards the close of 
the republican period and during the 
early part of the Empire, and begin 
our study of their educational methods 
and ideas by a brief examination of 
the general character and purpose of 
their education. We shall deal only 
with the intellectual and moral aspect 
of the question, leaving untouched 
their physical training, which had less 
of distinctive interest. 

It has been often remarked that the 
Romans were eminently practical, and 
we find this national trait no less con- 



CHILDREN AT ROME 



spicuous in their educational system 
than in other departments. It never 
occurred to them, as it did to the 
Greeks, to set before themselves an 
ideal of perfect mental and physical 
development, — an ideal which origi- 
nated in an inborn desire for perfec- 
tion and harmony, and was altogether 
independent of the utiHtarian value of 
such a plan of education. They had, 
of course, an ideal, but it was one 
which they themselves would have jus- 
tified by demonstrating its practical 
value, and they would have con- 
demned as worthless any ideal which 
was not capable of this justification. 
The Romans of an early period 
thought it useful for their sons to 
have a knowledge of husbandry, of 



4 EDUCATION OF 

war, of arithmetic, and of the laws, 
for their practical needs as individ- 
uals and heads of families ; and of 
the deeds of their forefathers and the 
history of their country, in order to 
make them patriotic citizens. Under 
Greek influence the circle of culture 
was greatly widened, but the same 
practical tendency remained and pre- 
vented Roman education from being 
at any time entirely assimilated to that 
of the Greeks. The educated Roman 
of the later period was expected to 
be acquainted with the works of the 
great poets, philosophers, and histo- 
rians ; but he took an interest in 
these studies rather on account of 
the practical advantage he expected 
to derive from them, than because 



CHILDREN AT ROME 5 

he felt any strong natural inclination 
for them or hoped by their means to 
approach some ideal of mental or 
moral perfection. These studies were 
useful to a man of the world, and 
would be of service in forming his 
oratorical style and in enabling him 
to defend his opinions in the senate, 
and his friends or himself in the law 
courts. Quintilian proposes a very 
liberal educational scheme, embracing 
almost every department of culture, 
but that is chiefly because he believes 
that such a comprehensive plan is 
necessary for the training of the per- 
fect orator. The ideal and the ab- 
stract had little attraction for the 
Romans ; their tastes and capacities 
were bounded by the tangible and 



6 EDUCATION OF 

concrete. Their view of the purpose 

of education is aptly expressed in 

PUny's question, " Quotus enim quis- 

que tarn patiens ut veht discere quod 

in usu non sit habiturus?"^ Even in 

poetry the taste of the ancient Roman 

was for the kind that contains some 

instruction ; as Horace ^ says, 

*' Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, 
Lectorem delectando pariterque monendo."^ 

Owing to this practical standpoint, 
the principal occupations and pursuits 

1 Pliny, Epp. VIII. 14. 3. 

2 Ars Poet. 343. 

3 In Seneca's opinion, the only proper aim of 
education was to elevate the moral nature and to 
lead to a virtuous life, and any study which did 
not further this object was to him worthless. 
Although this view disregarded material advan- 
tages and motives, it was still, of course, strictly 
utilitarian and very different from that held by 
the Greeks. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 7 

in which the Romans engaged must 
have had considerable influence on 
the character of the instruction which 
they wished to be imparted to their 
children, and it will not be amiss to 
consider briefly what these occupa- 
tions were. 

During the early times of the Re- 
public, the only pursuits regarded Avith 
favour were those of warfare and agri- 
culture. Every citizen was liable to 
be called on to fight for his country, 
and, as wars were frequent, miUtary 
training was universal. Military dis- 
tinction was a necessary precursor of 
political power and honour; no man 
could be a candidate for office until 
he had served twenty years in the 
infantry or ten years in the cavalry. 



8 EDUCATION OF 

The army consisted of a militia which 
took the field when occasion de- 
manded, and when the war was over 
the soldier returned to resume his 
peaceful occupation at home. But 
when the Roman dominions had ex- 
tended to Spain, Asia, and Africa, wars 
became more constant and tedious, 
and armies were obliged to remain 
abroad for many successive campaigns; 
so that the soldiers were for many 
years at a time unable to return to 
their homes. Thus the army became 
a profession for a certain class of men, 
and the terms citizen and soldier, 
instead of being synonymous, were 
contrasted. It was no longer neces- 
sary for a man who aspired to political 
distinction to win laurels on the bat- 



CHILDREN AT ROME ' 9 

tie-field and promotion in the army, or 
even to serve a military term. There 
was in the law courts and on the 
political platforms at home abundant 
opportunity for obtaining prominence. 
Agriculture was the only peaceful 
pursuit in the early days which was 
deemed suitable for a Roman gentle- 
man, and although in later times it 
was not so extensively followed, people 
still looked upon old Cincinnatus, who 
left his plough to fight the ^Equians, as 
the model of what a true Roman ought 
to be. Cato and Varro wrote treatises 
on farming, and the sweetest of Roman 
poets devoted his most perfect poem 
to the praise of rural life and the art 
of the husbandman. The small agri- 
cultural holdings, indeed, gradually 



lO EDUCATION OF 

disappeared, but even at the close of 
the Republic there were throughout 
Italy numerous landed proprietors who 
lived on their estates and person- 
ally superintended their management. 
With the increase of luxury in the 
capital, and the consequent larger 
demand for fruits and other delicacies 
of the table, agriculture became no 
less profitable than respectable. 

Besides those estate-owners who re- 
sided on their property, there was 
another class of propertied men which 
attained great importance in the first 
century B.C., and of which T. Pom- 
ponius Atticus, the friend of Cicero, 
is an example.^ This class amassed 

1 Mommsen, History of Rome, Vol. IV., p. 
608 (American edition). 



CHILDREN AT ROME II 

large fortunes by lending money not 
only in Italy, but in the provinces, and 
by estate-farming on a large scale. 
They did not reside on their estates, 
but had their properties managed for 
them by agents. Their wealth gave 
them prominence both socially and 
politically, even when, as in the 
case of Atticus, they took no part in 
public affairs. They were often men 
of culture, who patronized literature 
and the arts; and along with the pro- 
vincial governors who returned to 
Rome "spoliis Orientis onusti " and 
the men who became wealthy by farm- 
ing the state revenues, they formed 
the circle of fashionable and luxurious 
society in the capital, whose lavish 
style of living has made the extrava- 



12 EDUCATION OF 

gance and self-indulgence of that age 
proverbial. 

Cicero ^ enumerates the occupations 
which in his time were considered re- 
spectable. "Those," he says, "which 
require a high degre of intelligence 
or are of considerable utility, such as 
medicine, agriculture, or instruction 
in the liberal arts, are honourable for 
men with whose rank they are consis- 
tent. Commerce on a small scale is 
mean (sordida) ; on a large and liberal 
scale it is not to be despised; and it 
is even to be commended when it is 
satisfied with its gains and finally 
betakes itself to an estate and landed 
property. But of all lucrative pursuits 
agriculture is the best, most produc- 

1 De Officiis, I. 42. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 3 

tive, most delightful, and most suit- 
able to a gentleman." Mommsen^ 
remarks on this that it indicates "a 
thoroughly developed aristocracy of 
planters, with a strong infusion of 
mercantile speculation, and a slight 
shading of general culture." 

In this list of occupations Cicero 
omits one which is the most important 
of all for our present subject — the 

1 History of Rome, Vol. IV., p. 608, note. For 
the high estimation in which agriculture was held 
see the beginning of Cato's De Re Rustica. 
Horace attributes the decline of morals in his 
own day to the abandonment of the old virtuous 
country life when 

" Rustics brave a manful seed beheld, 
Expert the wood their arms had felled 
To fetch at their strict mother's nod, 
Or cleave with Sabine spade the clod." 

Od. III. 6 (Gladstone's translation). 



14 EDUCATION OF 

profession of Law. It was not a 
recognized profession in his time, the 
acceptance of fees for legal services 
not being sanctioned by law until the 
reign of Claudius. But even in the 
last century of the Republic one of 
the chief avenues to political influence 
and office was through practice in the 
law courts. The opportunity which 
forensic practice gave to ambitious 
young men for acquiring dialectical 
and oratorical skill which would after- 
wards prove useful in the senate and 
on the rostra could not be overlooked; 
and to this advantage must be added 
the opportunities offered them by the 
courts for the public display of their 
abilities, and for making powerful 
friends by dexterous support in time 



CHILDREN AT ROME 



15 



of need.^ And although the law for- 
bade the payment of ."ees to advocates, 
there were other means by which 
clients might and did testify their 
gratitude.^ Besides these political 
advantages, the legal profession en- 
joyed a high estimation in public 
opinion; the distinguished orator was 
pointed out to visitors at the city as 
one of the most notable sights of 
Rome. Thus it happened that it was 
for this profession that most of the 
education at Rome was planned as a 
preparation. The only Latin educa- 

1 Tacitus, Dial, de Orat, 36. Quanto quisque 
plus dicendo poterat, tanto facilius honores ad- 
sequebatur. . . . Hos et praeturae et consulatus 
vocare ultro videbantur, hi ne privati quidem 
sine potestate erant. 

2 See Tyrrell's Correspondence of Cicero, 
Vol. I., Introduction, p. xxxix. 



1 6 EDUCATION OF 

tional works of importance which we 
possess deal exclusively with the train- 
ing of the advocate.^ 

Horace ^ complains of the hankering 
after riches which characterized all 
classes and ages in his time. From 
one end of the forum to the other, he 
says, young and old alike recite the 
lesson, "Money must be sought first 
of all, virtue after money." Juvenal^ 
declared that although no temples had 
as yet been erected to the goddess 

1 Cicero (pro Murena, 14) places the profes- 
sions of the army and the bar side by side as the 
two which confer the highest dignity. " Duae 
sunt artes quae possunt locare homines in amplis- 
simo gradu dignitatis : una imperatoris, altera 
oratoris boni. Ab hoc enim pacis ornamenta 
retinentur : ab illo belli pericula repelluntur." 

2 Epp. I. I. 53. 
s Sat. I. 112. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 7 

Money, her majesty was most sacred 
of all. An age in which pleasure had 
so many votaries could not fail to pay 
homage to riches. The vast fields 
opened up in the East for commercial 
and financial speculation created at 
Rome a plutocracy which soon rivalled 
in importance the aristocracy of birth. 
A new career was thus thrown open 
for the Roman youth. Banking was 
one of the most certain roads to 
wealth. Reckless expenditure of 
money had become so fashionable 
that men desirous of making a display 
were obliged to borrow large sums, 
and there were frequent transitions 
from wealth to poverty and from 
poverty to wealth. The rich parvenu 
is a familiar character in the literature 



1 8 EDUCATION OF 

of the early Empire. Such a state of 
society must have given high impor- 
tance to those branches of education 
which are needed for the conduct of 
business. 

We have now before us the pursuits 
in which Romans of good position 
engaged — warfare, agriculture, law, 
mercantile and financial business. 
The professions of medicine, archi- 
tecture, and instruction in the higher 
branches of learning, which Cicero 
includes in his list of reputable occu- 
pations, were naturally limited to a 
small section of the community, so 
that they did not to any great extent 
affect the general scheme of educa- 
tion. This preliminary review of the 
pursuits for which the Romans might 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 9 

wish to prepare their children seemed 
necessary, in view of the practical 
character of education at Rome, be- 
fore entering upon our main subject, 
though we shall not find much indica- 
tion that the first two, warfare and 
agriculture, exercised any great influ- 
ence on educational plans or methods. 
The highest aim of school education 
was to produce able lawyers and ora- 
tors; but since a thorough training in 
the studies necessary for other pursuits 
was deemed needful also for the law- 
yer, elementary schools designed as a 
preparation for the study of law and 
oratory fulfilled the requirements of 
other callings at the same time. 



20 EDUCATION OF 



CHAPTER II 

THE child's earliest TRAINING 

Although it is here intended to 
deal chiefly with the intellectual side 
of education, it is not possible in 
doing so to keep the moral aspect of 
the question entirely out of view. 
This would be true of all education, 
and is especially so in the present 
case. The Roman teacher was re- 
garded as an instructor in morals and 
conduct as well as in mental accom- 
plishments. There was not, indeed, 
instruction in any definite or special 
system of morals in the schools for 



CHILDREN AT ROME 21 

the young. Religion and morality 
were not, at least in the period of 
Roman history best known to us, 
inseparably connected; religion was 
chiefly a matter of forms and cere- 
monies. After Greek culture had 
gained a foothold the old belief in 
the vengeance inflicted by the gods 
on evil doers lost much of its strength, \ 
and although Vergil, and at times even 
Horace, give us intimations that re- 
ligious faith was not yet dead, and 
although superstitions of all kinds 
flourished nowhere more rankly than 
at Rome, it is apparent in the litera- 
ture of the time that of genuine piety, 
as we understand it, there was com- 

1 Hon Od. I. 35, 36: unde manum juventus 
metu deorum continuit ? 



22 EDUCATION OF 

paratively little. Children were accus- 
tomed to witness and share in various 
ceremonies in honour of the gods, 
perhaps even to hear a daily prayer 
offered by the head of the household/ 
and to consider each of the day's pro- 
ceedings as presided over by a special 
deity, but the gods, where believed 
in at all, were regarded not as the 
rewarders of right and avengers of 
wrong, but rather as powerful beings 
who were jealous of their prerogatives 
and whose good-will it was wise to 
conciliate. But there was a morality 
independent of religion and founded 
on the natural human sense of right 
and wrong, and it was considered 
part of a teacher's duty to encour- 

1 Cato, De Re Rustica, CXLIII. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 23 

age and educate this instinct in his 
pupils. 

Horace ^ describes the moral training 
which he received from his father, and 
which may, perhaps, be taken as a 
sample of what was regarded at that 
time as sound and sufficient moral 
instruction. It does not exhibit what 
we should now regard as a high stand- 
ard of principle and conduct. It was 
the practical wisdom of a man who 
took common-sense views of life; who 
had no ambition that his son should 
be a paragon of virtue, but would feel 
satisfied if he lived an honourable life, 
fulfilling the ordinary duties towards 
his neighbours, and, above all, towards 
himself. The method was one of 

1 Sat. I. 4. 105 sq. 



24 EDUCATION OF 

examples and warnings, taken from 
the pupil's own experience and ac- 
quaintance, to enforce good conduct. 
The sanction of morality which he 
most relied on was public opinion. 
When exhorting to frugality, and 
warning against extravagance, he 
pointed to certain notorious spend- 
thrifts who had reduced themselves to 
misery by their prodigality. He left 
it to the philosophers to assign the 
reasons why some things should be 
avoided and others sought after, con- 
tenting himself with endeavouring to 
maintain in his son the traditional 
Roman virtue. The disrepute which 
attended the commission of certain 
actions was appealed to as the most 
cogent reason for avoiding them. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 25 

There is no suggestion of a higher 
motive. 

The virtues which the Romans most 
admired and were most desirous of 
having cultivated in their children 
were pietas, in its threefold aspect of 
duty towards the gods, towards ances- 
tors and parents, and towards fellow- 
men; miodesty (pudor), which was 
especially valued in the young; and 
the manly qualities of firmness of 
character (constantia), courage (forti- 
tudo, virtus), and seriousness or 
earnestness (gravitas). In order to 
foster these virtues, children were 
instructed in the history of - their 
forefathers, and taught to admire the 
ancient heroes of their country, who 
had been embodiments of the charac- 



26 EDUCATION OF 

teristic Roman virtues. The almost 
unlimited authority (patria potestas) ^ 
which a father was allowed by the laws 
over his children is in itself a remark- 
able indication of the national feeling 
with regard to the reverence which 
ought to be shown by the young to 

1 In the eyes of the law children were even 
more absolutely the property of their father than 
his slaves were. If a father sold his children and 
they were manumitted by the purchaser, they did 
not become free, but passed again into the posses- 
sion of their father, and it was not until they had 
been sold three times that he lost his claim to them. 
There are many instances in Roman history of 
sons being punished with death by their fathers 
for some crime against the State. Even the 
attainment of high office did not free a man from 
the parental authority. The patria potestas, 
however, seems to have been rarely abused. 
Public opinion would naturally act as a check 
upon it. Cato the elder (see Plutarch's life of 
him, cap. 20) warned fathers to beware of even 
striking their children. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 27 

their parents. Respect for authority 
and for established institutions was 
constantly and imperatively inculcated 
in children, and the effect of this early 
training remained as a potent factor in 
their conduct as men.^ A frank, open 
character was also highly valued in 
children. 

The influence of the mother in the 
early times, and in the best Roman 
families at all times, was one of great 

1 Pliny, Epist. VIII. 23, laments the rareness 
of modesty in children in his day as compared 
with those of former times. " How many are 
there," he asks, "who will give place to a man 
from respect for his age or dignity ? They are 
shrewd men already, and know everything; they 
are in awe of nobody and imitate nobody, but 
take themselves for their own examples." One 
might suppose him writing in the 19th century. 
There were still, however (Juvenal, X. 298), fami- 
lies in which the old manners were preserved. 



28 EDUCATION OF 

importance. Woman enjoyed at Rome 
a high position and dignity. The care 
of the child's earliest years was en- 
trusted to its mother. The author of 
the Dialogus de Oratoribus (cap. 28) 
tells us that in early times the son, 
born of a virtuous mother, was edu- 
cated, not in the chamber of a slave- 
nurse, but in his mother's arms (gremio 
ac sinu matris). It was the mother's 
chief glory to keep the house and wait 
upon her children. Sometimes an 
elderly female relative of faultless 
character was chosen, and to her were 
entrusted all the children of the same 
family; she allowed no wrong words 
or actions in her presence; by the 
respect and reverence which she in- 
spired she controlled not only their 



CHILDREN AT ROME 29 

Studies, but their play. So Cornelia 
presided over the education of the 
Gracchi, Aurelia over that of Caesar, 
Atia over that of Augustus. And they 
made of their children great men. 
The object of this discipline was to 
keep the young hearts pure and 
untainted and uncorrupted by vices, 
so that they might readily receive good 
instruction, and all their energies 
might be devoted to their one pursuit 
in life — warfare, law, or oratory. 
Tacitus says of Agricola ^ that his child- 
hood was surrounded by a mother's 
care and love, and so he spent his early 
years in none but honourable pursuits. 
His mother, Julia Procilla, was a 
woman of rare purity of character. 
1 Agric, 4. 



30 EDUCATION OF 

The influence of the mother was 
succeeded by that of the father. In 
the earliest period of the Republic, 
before culture had found a place 
among the Latins, the education of a 
boy was almost entirely in his parents' 
hands. As soon as he was old enough 
to do without his mother's immediate 
care, the Roman boy became the con- 
stant companion of his father. He 
attended him in the fields, in the 
senate, and at the houses of his 
friends. It is true that there were 
schools at Rome at a very early period, 
which gave instruction in reading, 
writing, and arithmetic, and educa- 
tion in these elementary branches was 
general throughout the community. 
Even slaves and the poorer people 



CHILDREN AT ROME 3 1 

were not unfrequently taught these 
subjects. But it was the opinion of 
the man who was by common consent 
the type of the old Roman character, 
Cato the Elder, that freeborn citizens 
ought not to be instructed by slaves, 
and at that time most of the teachers 
were slaves. He himself took the 
entire education of his son in charge, 
teaching him reading, writing, and 
Roman law, as well as the manly exer- 
cises of riding, wrestling, boxing, and 
swimming. The object kept in view 
was that of training up a good sol- 
dier-citizen for the warlike republic. 
There was no thought of cultivating 
the sesthetic side of the mind, of train- 
ing the taste in literature and art, or 
of producing that harmonious develop- 



32 EDUCATION OF 

ment of body and mind after which 
the Athenians sought. Cato lived at 
the time when Greek influence was 
just beginning to be felt. He did his 
best to delay the complete revolution 
of national manners and education 
which he saw to be imminent; but 
even he so far yielded to the new 
movement as to study Greek literature 
in his old age and communicate to 
his boy in Latin whatever of the Greek 
wisdom he thought likely to be service- 
able to a Roman. 

The fact that Cato took into his 
own hands the education of his son is 
all the more remarkable from the fact 
that he had a slave who was capable of 
performing that duty, and who even 
earned money for his master by teach- 



CHILDREN AT ROME 33 

ing other people's children. Cicero's 
friend Atticus was instructed ^ by his 
father in the elementary studies. 
Cicero himself, becoming dissatisfied 
with Dionysius, the teacher of his son 
and nephew, personally took charge of 
their education.^ Augustus taught his 
daughter's sons, and with them other 
children.^ 

The Romans attached a high impor- 
tance to early associations, and to the 
influences to which the tender and 
plastic minds of children were ex- 
posed. This was not merely from 
considerations of morality, but also 
on account of the effect produced on 

1 Corn. Nepos, Att. I. 2. 

2 Cicero, Ad Att. VIII. 4. i. 

3 Suetonius, Aug. 64. 
D 



34 EDUCATION OF 

the child's phraseology and pronuncia- 
tion by the language of those about 
him, Cicero attributes the correct 
use of language for which Curio, not- 
withstanding his lack of culture, was 
distinguished, to the associations of 
home. "It is of great moment," he 
remarks,^ "whom one hears every day 
at home, with whom one speaks in 
boyhood, and what language one's 
father, mother, and pedagogues use. 
We have read the letters of Cornelia, 
mother of the Gracchi: it is evident 
that her sons were brought up no less 
truly in their mother's language than 
in their mother's arms." Quintilian 
is of the same opinion. "Above all 
things," he urges,^"let the language 

1 Brutus, 2IO. 2 Inst. Orat. I. i. 50. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 35 

of nurses be free from faults. Chry- 
sippus would have wished them to be 
learned, if that were possible, and at 
any rate desired that the best available 
nurses should be chosen. It is true 
that their morals are a more important 
consideration, but their language also 
ought to be correct. They are the 
first whom the boy will hear; it is 
their words that he will try to imitate 
and reproduce. We naturally retain 
most firmly what we have learned in 
our earliest years, just as vessels retain 
the flavour with which they have been 
imbued when new, and dyes cannot 
be washed out of wool. And errors 
naturally stick more persistently in 
proportion as they are more faulty." 
He adds that the same care should be 



36 EDUCATION OF 

exercised regarding the language used 
by the child's playmates, parents, and 
pedagogues, and if it is impossible to 
obtain perfection in all these cases 
there should at least be one constant 
attendant to correct any faulty expres- 
sions used in the child's presence. 

The quick imitative faculty of chil- 
dren being so justly appreciated by 
the Romans, it was one of their 
educational principles to take every 
advantage of it. The great characters 
of history were held up to the young 
as examples to be followed; it was 
sought to train their moral sense and 
to stimulate their ambition by awaken- 
ing in them a desire to emulate the 
deeds and characters of the national 
heroes. We have seen that the method 



CHILDREN AT ROME 37 

used by Horace's father in educating 
his son was that of example rather than 
precept. As Seneca^ says, "Longum 
est iter per prsecepta, breve et efficax 
per exempla." Juvenal^ deplores the 
fact that in his day the young were 
corrupted by evil examples which 
were found at home, and which de- 
moralized all the sooner when they 
entered the mind under the high 
authority of parents.^ One reason 
alone, he says, should be sufficient to 
make us moral; namely, that our 
children may not imitate our vices, 
"Maxima debetur puero reverentia." 

1 Ep. VI. s. 2 Sat. XIV. 31. 

3 Compare Tacitus, Dial, de Orat. 29. 



38 EDUCATION OF 

CHAPTER III 

SCHOOL-EDUCATION 

Plutarch^ says that a freedman, 
Spurius Carvilius, who lived between 
the first and second Punic wars, was 
the first to open a grammar school at 
Rome. This probably only means, as 
Grasberger ^ remarks, that he was the 
first to obtain celebrity in this way, or 
that his school was one for higher 
literary and rhetorical instruction. 
We know from the story of Virginia, 
as told by Livy,^ and from various 

1 Quaest. Rom. 59. 

2 Erziehung und Unterricht bei den Griechen 
und Romern, Vol. II., p. 211. ^ Liv. III. 44. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 39 

other sources, that schools were in 
existence long before this time. It 
was customary in later times to begin 
to attend school at the age of seven. 
At no time, however, was it a universal 
custom at Rome for children to receive 
their education at school. There were 
persons even in Quintilian's day who 
preferred to have them taught at heme. 
Tacitus^ seems to be opposed to a 
school education, at least in its higher 
branches, and Pliny ^ commends a 
friend for having his son educated in 
the elementary subjects in his own 
house. 

The State did not for a long time 
exercise any supervision over schools 
or provide in any way for their main- 
1 Dial, de Orat 35. 2 Ep. III. 3. 



40 EDUCATION OF 

tenance. They were private enter- 
prises, undertaken and conducted by 
individuals, who were generally slaves 
or freedmen, and often Greeks or of 
Greek parentage. This latter was the 
case even with instruction in Latin; 
there were as early as the third cen- 
tury before Christ numbers of Greeks 
among the lower classes in the capital, 
and some of these opened schools 
for Roman children. A learned slave 
sometimes earned money for his mas- 
ter, as Chilo did for Cato the Elder, 
by giving instruction to the children 
of other families. 

Polybius, writing in the middle of 
the second century B.C., blamed the 
Romans for neglecting to provide a 
state superintendence of education.^ 

1 Cicero, De Rep. IV. 3. 3. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 4 1 

There were, indeed, in early times, 
when the introduction of Greek ideas 
and manners began to excite alarm 
among conservative Romans, occa- 
sional half-hearted interferences with 
education on the part of the authori- 
ties. Suetonius^ quotes a decree of 
the senate empowering the praetor to 
banish from Rome the philosophers 
and rhetors, and a later censorial edict 
which complains of " men who intro- 
duced a new kind of learning, at whose 
schools the youth assembled, and who 
called themselves Latin rhetors, and 
with whom young men wasted whole 
days." The edict concludes merely 
with an expression of censorial disap- 
proval (nobis non placere), without any 

1 De Rhet. i. 



42 EDUCATION OF 

definite prohibition. Suetonius adds 
that the art of rhetoric gradually came 
to be considered useful and honour- 
able and was sought after both for its 
ornamental and for its practical advan- 
tages. It was not, however, till the 
reign of Vespasian that schools of any- 
kind were subsidized by the state. 
Quintilian was the first to open a 
state-supported school and to receive 
a salary from the exchequer. 

The objections of Tacitus, referred 
to above, to a school education are 
directed mainly against the advanced 
or rhetors' schools, in which the 
declamations on imaginary topics met 
with his strong disapproval, as they 
did with that of Petronius.^ Tacitus^ 

1 Petronius, Satyricon, i, 2. 2 Dial, de Orat, 35. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 43 

thought that the mutual applause of 
the pupils in these schools, when every 
declamation however poor was certain 
of flattering acclamations, was likely 
to prove injurious by giving the pupils 
excessive self-confidence.^ Marcus 
Aurelius also seems to have thought 
home education preferable, for he 
says ^ that he had to thank his great- 
grandfather that he did not go to 
a public school, but had excellent 
instruction at home. 

In the second chapter of Quintilian's 
first book we find a long discussion 
of the rival advantages of home and 
school education, and a warm advo- 
cacy of the latter. The chief objec- 
tion to schools, the author says, are, 

1 Compare Quintilian, 11. 2. 10. 2 Medit. I. 4. 



44 EDUCATION OF 

first, that they are dangerous to morals, 
and second, that the teacher cannot 
give as much time to each individual 
in the school as he would be able to 
bestow on a single pupil at home. 
He answers the first objection by 
saying that the opportunities offered 
at home for the corruption of the 
moral character are not fewer than are 
to be found at school, if the child's 
nature is already prone to vice, or too 
little diligence is exercised in pre- 
serving his purity. The teacher at 
home may be immoral, or the slaves 
by whom the child is surrounded may 
be so. If the boy's natural disposi- 
tion be good, and his parents are not 
blind or negligent, they may choose 
a teacher of irreproachable character 



CHILDREN AT ROME 45 

(and wise parents will take particular 
care to do so) and a discipline of the 
strictest kind, and at the same time 
attach to the boy's side some friend 
or faithful freedman who will con- 
stantly attend him and exert a salutary 
influence on all around him. Quin- 
tilian goes on to say that parents have 
themselves to blame when their chil- 
dren acquire evil habits. The lax 
indulgence shown to children, the fine 
dresses in which they were clothed, 
the dainty food supplied to them, the 
luxurious way in which they were car- 
ried about in litters, never touching 
the ground unless supported on either 
hand by attendants, the pleasure and 
lafughter with which their improper 
speeches were listened to, the scenes 



46 EDUCATION OF 

of license and debauchery which they 
were permitted to witness in their own 
homes, — all this formed their training 
at home; what wonder if instead of 
learning these vices at school they 
carried them to school with them? 

In reply to the second objection he 
urges that even in schools individual 
attention is not impossible, and if it 
were, the counterbalancing advantages 
are great. The best teachers delight 
in a numerous class, while inferior 
men generally, conscious of their 
weakness, confine themselves to single 
pupils, and do not disdain to perform 
the office of mere pedagogues. The 
foremost teachers cannot be induced 
to give their entire time to one pupil. 
Besides, a teacher's presence is not 



CHILDREN AT ROME 47 

necessary while the pupil is engaged 
in writing, learning by heart, or pre- 
paring his studies, and there are cer- 
tain kinds of instruction which can be 
imparted at once to a class of pupils 
as conveniently as to one individual. 
There are of course times when indi- 
vidual attention is indispensable, as 
in the correction of faults, and, doubt- 
less, there is here some inconvenience 
resulting from the presence of num- 
bers, but this disadvantage is offset by 
the many advantages of school educa- 
tion. It is especially in the case of 
boys who intend to become orators 
that Quintilian ^ thinks the school pref- 
erable. He whose life is to be passed 
in intercourse with men and before the 

1 Quintilian, I. 2. 18. 



48 EDUCATION OF 

public eye must be habituated while 
young to society, so as not to fear his 
fellowmen or become pallid in a soli- 
tary existence uncheered by the sun. 
Further, the man who never matches 
himself against other men is likely 
to become conceited and self-opin- 
ionated, and he, moreover, loses the 
advantage of forming enduring friend- 
ships; for initiation in the same 
studies is as sacred a bond as initi- 
ation in the same religious rites. 
Where will a man acquire the communis 
sensus, the social instinct that binds 
humanity together, if he secludes him- 
self from that intercourse with his 
fellows which is natural even to dumb 
animals ? 

There is also, Quintilian continues, 



CHILDREN AT ROME 49 

this benefit in school education, that 
each pupil profits not only by the 
information given directly to himself, 
but also by that imparted to the others. 
The praise and blame meted out to 
his fellow-pupils will be serviceable to 
him also. His ambition to excel will 
be stimulated, and imitation of his 
successful classmates will be easier 
and, therefore, more agreeable, than 
imitation of his teacher. Another 
consideration is the fact that the 
instructor himself does not feel the 
same inspiration and enthusiasm when 
addressing a single pupil as when 
teaching a large number. He has a 
secret disdain of letting the powers 
which he has acquired with so much 
labour stoop to one auditor. At the 



50 EDUCATION OF 

same time ^ children should not be sent 
to so large a school that there would 
be danger of their being neglected. 
But no good teacher will burden him- 
self with a greater number than he 
can sustain. He must, moreover, 
take care to be on friendly terms with 
each pupil, and teach from affection 
rather than from duty. 

1 Quintilian, I. 2. 15. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 5 I 



CHAPTER IV 

SCHOOL BUILDINGS. HOURS OF SCHOOL. 
HOLIDAYS 

There were three principal kinds 
or grades of schools at Rome, — the 
elementary school, presided over by 
the ludi magister, the grammar school 
of the litteratus or grammaticus, and 
the rhetor's school. To these might 
be added the philosophic schools in 
which the representatives of the vari- 
ous philosophic systems gave their 
lectures. In the first or elementary 
schools reading, writing, and arith- 
metic were taught; in the grammar 



52 EDUCATION OF 

schools technical grammar, exegesis of 
poets, and sometimes, if not always, 
geometry and music; in the rhetors' 
schools young men were prepared for 
public life and the bar by declama- 
tions, dissertations, etc. It is only 
with the first two that we are here 
concerned. 

The general term for school in Latin 
was ludus, which was applied not only 
to schools for children, but also to the 
training schools of gladiators. In late 
times the Romans borrowed the Greek 
word schola, and this term was very 
generally used. The place where 
instruction was given was sometimes 
called pergula, a word which indicates 
a shed or booth in front of a house 
such as was used for exhibiting goods 



CHILDREN AT ROME 53 

for sale. In the story of Virginia^ 
we read that the litterarum ludi were 
among the shops. Such a pergula, 
when used as a school, would perhaps 
be enclosed and shut out from public 
view by hangings or a board partition. 
It was provided with benches (sub- 
sellia) for the pupils to sit upon, and 
stools (scamella) for their feet. The 
master sat in a chair (sella, cathedra) 
raised on a platform (pulpitum), and 
each pupil came forward in his turn 
to recite his lessons. Mention is 
made^ of a monument to a school- 
master in Capua on which was carved 
in high relief an elderly man sitting 
on a high throne, with a boy on his 

1 Livy, III. 44. 2 Grasberger, Erziehung und 
Unterricht, Vol. II., p. 216. 



54 EDUCATION OF 

right and a girl on his left, and an 
inscription "Magister ludi literarii." 
Some authorities mention an outer 
hall (proscholium) in which the peda- 
gogues who accompanied the pupils to 
school waited to conduct them home 
when their studies were over. Here, 
also, the children left their cloaks, and 
put the finishing touches to their toilets 
before entering the presence of the 
master. On the walls of the school- 
room were hung pictorial representa- 
tions of events in mythology and 
history, which served to bring vividly 
before the pupils' minds the subjects 
of their reading lessons. Geography 
was probably taught only incident- 
ally, though the Romans were familiar 
with maps, even in the time of Pro- 



CHILDREN AT ROME 55 

pertius.-^ Lyres also were suspended 
on the walls, to be taken down at the 
music lesson. Conspicuous likewise 
was the master's rod (ferula), the sign 
and instrument of his authority. 

Children brought to school with 
them, or their pedagogues (in this 
capacity called capsarii) brought for 
them, a box (capsa, scrinium), which 
could be slung on the arm, containing 
the writing-materials, book-rolls, tab- 
lets, and reckoning-stones (calculi), 

1 Prop. Eleg. V. 3, 37. Cogor et e tabula 
pictos cognoscere raundos. This line has been 
separated from its context and treated as if it 
implied the teaching of geography from maps in 
schools, to which it has no reference whatever. 
The suggestion Conor for Cogor seems very- 
probable. In later times maps were very com- 
mon and their educational value duly appre- 
ciated. See Eumenius, Pro Instaur. Schol. 
Augustod. c. 20. 



56 EDUCATION OF 

which they would need at school. The 
familiar verse of Horace, in which 
children on their way to school are 
spoken of as "laevo suspensi loculos 
tabulamque lacerto,"^ shows that the 
children in his native town did not 
enjoy the luxury of a capsarius. 

This lower sort of pedagogue took 
no part in the instruction of his young 
master, his duty being merely to con- 
duct him to and from school, and 
watch over his behaviour while under 
his charge. Careful parents selected 
the most trustworthy of their slaves to 
fill this office, but we learn from Plu- 
tarch ^ that parents were often culpa- 
bly negligent in this respect. "The 

iSat. I. 6, 74; Epp. 1. 1, 56. 
2 De Liberis Educandis, VII. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 



57 



most worthy slaves," he says, "are 
made farmers, shipmasters, merchants, 
house-stewards, money-lenders; but 
when a slave is found who is a drunk- 
ard or a glutton, or useless for any 
kind of business, the sons of the 
house are entrusted to his care." In 
rich families there was often a superior 
kind of pedagogue who superintended 
the boys' studies at home. Men of 
considerable learning were sometimes 
engaged for this position and were 
treated with consideration and respect. 
Augustus ^ assigned them special seats 
in the theatre beside the praetextati. 
But this class of pedagogues was gen- 
erally composed of Greeks who were 
hard-up and glad to barter their mul- 

1 Suetonius, Aug. 44. 



58 EDUCATION OF 

tifarious knowledge for the certainty 
of a good dinner. JuvenaP sneers 
at the "starveling Greek" (Graeculus 
esuriens) who knows everything and 
is ready to act as teacher of grammar, 
rhetoric, or geometry, as painter, 
gymnastic trainer, soothsayer, rope- 
dancer, physician, or magician. Quin- 
tilian ^ says that the pedagogue should 
be either well educated or conscious 
of his ignorance: "There is nothing 
worse than those who, having advanced 
a little beyond the first rudiments, 
have assumed a false conceit of know- 
ledge; for they are too proud to sur- 
render the province of instruction to 
others." 

Children usually began to attend 

1 Sat. III. 78. 2 instit. Orat. I. i. 8. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 59 

school at the age of seven. Quin- 
tilian^ thought this too late. He 
admits that scarcely as much can be 
accomplished in the first seven years 
as in one year afterwards, but even 
this slight advantage should not be 
missed. What better thing can a child 
do than study, he asks, as soon as it 
can speak? The rudiments demand 
mere memory, and this is strongest 
in children of that age. Quintilian, 
indeed, makes large demands on the 
mental energy of his pupils. He 
justifies himself ^ by saying that chil- 
dren are less easily fatigued than 
persons of a more mature age and that 
the mind is more teachable before it 
becomes hardened. For proof he 
1 Instit. Orat. I. i. 17. 2 jbid, I. 12. 8. 



6o EDUCATION OF 

refers to the fact that within two years 
after a child is able to articulate it 
can speak sufficiently well, while for- 
eigners at Rome required many years 
to become familiar with Latin. ^ So it 
is that those who are expert in any art 
are called TratSo/xa^ets. The fact that 
all the mishaps and tumbles that befall 
children, their creeping on hands and 
knees and running about the entire day, 
do not harm them, shows that they 
can bear more hardship than men. 

1 He leaves out of account two considerations : 
first, that the child has nothing to unlearn ; no 
formed habits of articulation, no disposition to 
produce instead of the exact sounds of the lan- 
guage he is learning the more or less approximate 
sounds of a language already learned ; and sec- 
ond, that during the years preceding his ability 
to articulate he has been acquiring familiarity 
with the spoken sounds. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 6 1 

This is because their bodies are not 
heavy, and similarly their minds are 
moved with slight effort, and, not 
depending in their studies on their 
own efforts, but surrendering them- 
selves to be moulded by others, they 
are not greatly fatigued. Besides, they 
do not reflect upon and measure the 
work that they have done, and thought 
is more fatiguing than actual labour. 

This is an expression of opinion 
that we should hardly have expected 
from a teacher of Quintilian's long 
experience, whose humanity and ten- 
derness to children are conspicuous 
throughout his writings. One might 
compare it with the early training 
which J. S. Mill received from his 
father. That Quintilian did not wish 



62 EDUCATION OF 

to overstrain the powers of his pupils 
he assures us ^ in another place. " I 
am not so ignorant," he says, "of what 
the different ages require as to think 
that those of tender years ought to be 
hurried on and labour exacted from 
them at all costs. For we must take 
particular care that the child hate not 
the studies which he cannot yet love, 
nor carry his dread of the unpleasant 
draught he has once drunk even 
beyond the years of childhood. Let 
his study take the form of play; let 
him be coaxed and praised, and some- 
times experience the pleasure of having 
displayed knowledge; . . . give him 
occasionally an opportunity to match 
himself against another pupil, and let 
1 1. 1. 20. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 6$ 

him often suppose himself victorious; 
and stimulate him with such prizes as 
are attractive to boys of his age." 

Children were required to rise be- 
fore daybreak, and present themselves 
at school before sunrise, where they 
found the master awaiting them. Mar- 
tial ^ addresses an angry epigram to a 
schoolmaster who lived near him and 
who, he says, kept him awake a// night 
by the sound of his harsh voice and 
the beatings he gave his pupils. The 
same poet ^ speaks of children buying 
their breakfast of bakers, probably on 
their way to school, at the hour when 
the cocks were beginning to crow. 

1 Epig. IX. 68. 

2 Martial Epig. XIV. 222. 

Surgite : iam vendit pueris ientacula pistor, 
Cristataeque sonant undique lucis aves. 



64 EDUCATION OF 

Artificial light was necessary for these 
morning studies. Each of the pupils 
brought his lantern with him, so that ^ 
their copies of Virgil and Horace were 
smudged by the smoke from the lan- 
terns,^ and the teacher was obliged to 
put up with their disagreeable odour, 
sitting, as Juvenal says, in a place 
where no blacksmith or weaver would 
stay. After this morning session was 
over the pupils went home for a meal, 
after which they again returned to 
school. The entire time spent at 
school each day was about six hours 
in the forenoon; in the afternoon the 
schools were not opened. 

1 Juvenal, VII. 226. 

2 The Romans had not invented the lamp- 
chimney, and so there v^^as nothing to consume 
the smoke. See Becker's Gallus, p. 309. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 65 

There were pauses at intervals dur- 
ing the hours of school work to prevent 
over-fatigue and to enable the children 
to collect their thoughts. Quintilian 
strongly insists on the principle that 
every effort should be made to prevent 
the distaste for learning that is likely 
to result from too constant an appli- 
cation. With this object frequent 
change of subjects was recommended. 
"Variety itself," Quintilian says,^ "re- 
freshes and reinvigorates the mind. 
Rest from writing is obtained by 
reading, and the fatigue of reading is 
in its turn relieved by a change to 
something else. However many things 
we may have done, we are somehow 
always fresh for that which we are just 
1 1. 12. 4. 



66 EDUCATION OF 

beginning. . . . Facilius est multa 
facere quam diu." With the same 
object he recommended frequent 
change of masters. "Nothing in 
nature," he remarks, in another place, ^ 
"can bear continuous labour; even 
inanimate and insensate objects re- 
quire relaxation at intervals in order 
to preserve their force." Love of 
play, he adds, is a good sign in boys; 
the gloomy and downcast boy is not 
likely to have an alert mind at study. 
But relaxations must not be excessive, 
or they will cause a habit of idleness. 
Advantage may be taken of recreation 
for character study, for characters are 
exhibited with least restraint in play. 
Plutarch speaks in a similar strain. 
1 1. 3. 8. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 67 

Those fathers/ he says, are to be 
condemned who, from a desire to see 
their children excel others, lay upon 
them excessive tasks so that they 
become discouraged and finally reject 
study altogether. "As plants are 
nourished by water in moderation, but 
choked by a large application of it; 
so the mind is improved by moder- 
ate exertion, but drowned (^aTrnXerat) 
if the exertion is excessive. So we 
ought to give boys a relaxation from 
labour, considering that life is divided 
between resting and working." 

Roman boys, like boys in our own 
times, occasionally shirked school, or 
contrived to feign illness in order to 
avoid reciting their lessons. The 

1 De Liberis Educandis, XIII. 



68 EDUCATION OF 

master hung up, where all might read 
it, a board with the names of pupils 
who absented themselves or had run 
away.^ Persius ^ tells us that when a 
boy he used to rub his eyes with olive 
oil to give him the appearance of ill- 
ness, though how oil would have that 
effect is not apparent. Pliny ^ says 
that school children sometimes took 
cumin to make them pale. 

The schools of Rome were kept 
open during only eight months of the 
year. The summer vacation lasted 
during the warm months, from the 
middle of June until the middle of 
October. Our authority for this state- 

1 Grasberger, Erziehung und Unterricht, Vol. 
II., p. 224. 

2 Persius, III. 24. 

3 N. H. XX. 14. 57. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 69 

ment is not merely the much-contested 
line of Horace.^ 

Ibant octonis referentes Idibus sera, 

the meaning of which can still hardly 
be regarded as settled. Martial ^ 
appeals to a schoolmaster who (appar- 
ently for pecuniary reasons) kept his 
school open during the summer, to 
let his pupils rest until the Ides of 
October, "for," he says, "if the boys 
keep their health during summer, that 
is enough of learning for them." 
There were also holidays at the Quin- 
quatrus or festival of Minerva, which 
lasted five days, in the latter half of 
March. This brief vacation was espe- 
cially welcome, and all the more 
1 Sat. I. 6. 75. 2 Epig. X. 62. 



70 EDUCATION OF 

enjoyed for its shortness.^ At these 
holidays the teacher was presented by 
each pupil with a gift (some authori- 
ties regard this as a tuition fee) called 
Minerval. The only other vacation 
seems to have been at the Saturnalia, 
which took place in December, when 
there was a season of general rejoic- 
ing. The Roman school year was, 
therefore, divided in a manner very 
similar to our own, with its sum- 
mer, Christmas, and Easter vacations. 
There were also single holidays on 
the nundinae, or weekly market-days,^ 
which would correspond to our Satur- 
day holiday. 

1 Hor. Epp. II. 2. 199. 

2 Grasberger, Erziehung und Unterricht, Vol. 
II., p. 254. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 71 

CHAPTER V 

STUDIES IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 

In the elementary school (ludus lit- 
teramm, Indus litterarius), instruction 
was confined to reading, writing, and 
arithmetic. The teacher was called 
magister ludi, or more specifically, 
magister ludi litterarum. Unless the 
school was very large he took entire 
charge of all the subjects. The gen- 
eral term for the instruction given in 
the elementary school was litterse. 
For the methods employed in teach- 
ing reading and writing we are de- 
pendent chiefly on Quintilian, who 
treats the subject at considerable 



72 EDUCATION OF 

length and with his usual good judg- 
ment, in the first chapter of his first 
book. 

In teaching to read the first step 
was to obtain familiarity with the 
forms and sounds of the letters. It 
was a practice in Quintilian's time, of 
which he did not approve, to teach 
the names and order of the letters 
before their forms. The senses of 
sight and hearing ought to work side 
by side. The method of learning 
the names and order first, in Quin- 
tilian's opinion, prevents the pupil 
from recognizing a letter when he sees 
it, as he does not give attention to its 
shape, but depends on his memory of 
the sequence. For this reason, he 
says, when teachers think the letters 



CHILDREN AT ROME 73 

have been sufficiently imprinted on 
the mind in their usual sequence, 
they reverse the order and pick the 
letters out promiscuously until the 
pupil recognizes them from their 
shape and not from their position. 
"Moreover," he adds, "I do not dis- 
approve of the familiar practice of 
seeking to stimulate children to learn 
by giving them ivory letters to play 
with, or if anything else can be 
invented in which they will take more 
pleasure, and which it will delight 
them to handle, look at, and call by 
its name." Tiles, on which alphabets 
or verses were scratched before bak- 
ing, were used in the youngest classes. 
Horace ^ speaks of children being 

1 Sat. I. I. 25. 



74 EDUCATION OF 

coaxed to learn their letters by tid-bits 
of pastry. It is said that Herodes 
Atticus, who lived under the Anto- 
nines, had a son who was unable to 
learn the names of the letters until his 
father arranged to have him educated 
with twenty-four other boys, each of 
whom went by the name of one of the 
letters. 

The letters having been thoroughly 
learned, the next step was to master 
their various combinations into sylla- 
bles. From Quintilian's remark ^ that 
the custom of learning the sounds 
before the forms, which was injurious 
in the case of letters, was not so in 
the case of syllables, it would seem 
that it was usual to give pupils succes- 
1 Instit. Orat. I. i. 26. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 75 

sive combinations such as ba^ be, bi, 
etc., ca, ce, ci, etc., to spell and repeat 
until they had memorized them, and 
then to proceed to more difficult ones. 
Every possible combination had to be 
thoroughly mastered (syllabis nullum 
compendium est, perdiscendse omnes) 
before the child was permitted to read 
words. "It is a bad plan, though a 
common one, to let him postpone the 
most difficult syllables, so that when he 
has to write words he will be at a loss. 
Much trust must not too readily be 
placed in the first act of memorizing; 
constant and long-continued repetition 
will be necessary. In reading there 
must not be too much haste about 
connecting syllables into words, or 
about reading fast, until the pupil can 



76 EDUCATION OF 

form the combinations of letters in 
syllables without stumbling or hesita- 
tion, or at any rate without having to 
stop to think about it. Then he may 
begin to form words from syllables 
and continuous sentences from words. 
It is incredible how much delay is 
caused in reading by undue haste. It 
gives rise to hesitation, interruptions, 
and repetitions when pupils attempt 
more than they are equal to, and 
when, going wrong, they lose confi- 
dence even in what they already know. 
Reading should first of all be sure, 
then continuous; it must for a long 
time be slow, until by practice speed 
and accuracy are acquired." ^ 

The same author suggests^ that at 

1 Instit. Oral. I. i. 30-33. 2 /^^^, ^ 36. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 77 

this stage pupils should have their 
memories trained by learning by heart 
the sayings of wise men and chosen 
passages from the poets (the latter 
being more agreeable to children), by 
way of amusement. The memory, he 
says, is almost the only faculty in 
children of this age (when they are 
incapable of originating anything) 
which can be improved by the teacher's 
care. He recommends as a means for 
rendering the organs of speech more 
perfect and the pronunciation more 
distinct, that pupils should be re- 
quired to repeat as rapidly as possible 
words and verses of intentional diffi- 
culty, composed of many syllables 
harshly combined together. Without 
such practice as this he thinks that 



7 8 EDUCATION OF 

faults of pronunciation will become 
hardened and incurable. In reading 
poetry due attention was paid to metre 
and accent. 

The characteristic feature of the 
Roman method of teaching to read, 
as above described, was a painstaking 
diligence, and a determination to lay 
once for all a solid foundation for the 
educational superstructure. A thor- 
ough knowledge of the phonetic value 
of each letter and of each simple 
combination of letters was insisted on 
before reading was attempted; so that 
the pupil might be able without diffi- 
culty to read even words which he had 
never seen or heard before. 

The texts used for reading-lessons 
were generally the works of the poets. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 79 

"The poetSj" says Horace/ "shape the 
tender stammering lips of childhood." 
In old times the laws of the twelve 
tables were used in this way, and were 
also committed to memory, but Cicero 
says^ that since his boyhood this 
practice had fallen into disuse. The 
favourite poets were Livius Androni- 
cus, whose translation of Homer was 
commonly used as a school text-book, 
and in later times Vergil and Horace. 
The works of Terence, Cato the Elder, 
and the "sentences " of Publilius Syrus 
were also used, and passages were 
chosen from them to be learned by 
heart. 

Meantime the pupil was learning 
to write. There were apparently two 
1 Epp. 11. 126. 2 De Leg. II. 23. 



8o EDUCATION OF 

methods of teaching beginners to form 
the letters. One, and probably the 
usual method, was that according to 
which the teacher placed his hand 
on that of the child ^ and guided his 
fingers, a "head-line" (prsescriptum) 
having been first written out for imita- 
tion. The instruments used were the 
common writing tablets (i.e. thin 
boards with a raised margin and 
resembling in appearance our framed 
school slates, the surface of the 
interior portion being covered with 
wax), and the stilus or metal point 
with which lines were scratched on 
the waxed surface. The other end of 
the stilus was made flat for the pur- 
pose of obliterating, when necessary, 
1 Seneca Ep. 94, 51. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 8 1 

what had been written; hence the 
expression used by Horace for mak- 
ing corrections — stilum vertere. The 
other method of teaching to write was 
one recommended by Quintilian,^ and 
consisted in carving on wooden tablets 
the forms of letters and causing the 
pupils to draw their stilus repeatedly 
over the furrows thus traced for them 
until they became familiar with the 
movements necessary to form the let- 
ters, and the muscles of their fingers 
were strengthened. 

The practice of employing amanu- 
enses, which was so common among 
the well-to-do Romans, made good 
and rapid penmanship a matter of less 
importance than would have been the 

1 Instit, Orat. I. i. 27. 
G 



82 ' EDUCATION OF 

case if every one did his own writing. 
When every Roman of the higher 
classes had among his slaves men 
sufficiently educated to act as his sec- 
retaries, it was natural that he should 
hand over to them the mechanical part 
of his correspondence or authorship, 
and dictate to them what he had to 
communicate to his friends or to the 
world. Yet Quintilian^ thinks it a 
mistake to neglect the formation of a 
good and rapid hand. "Writing is 
of the first importance in our studies; 
by it alone is true and well-grounded 
progress obtained; but a slow pen 
delays thought, while ill-formed and 
confused hand-writing is not easily 
legible, and creates the additional 
1 Instit. Orat. I. i. 28. 



CHILDREN AT ROME S^ 

labour of dictating what needs to be 
transcribed. Especially in private 
and intimate correspondence it will 
be found advantageous not to have left 
this part of education neglected." It 
is characteristic of the Roman utili- 
tarian standpoint that nobody seems 
to have thought beauty of penmanship 
worth cultivating. 

Occasion was taken at the writing 
exercises to impart by the way instruc- 
tion in language and to inculcate 
moral maxims. The head-lines some- 
times consisted of definitions of rare or 
difficult words, the meanings of which 
it would afterwards be useful for the 
child to know, and sometimes of moral 
precepts or wise sayings. 

Besides the waxed tablet already 



84 EDUCATION OF 

mentioned, paper (papyrus) or parch- 
ment (membrana) and ink (atramen- 
tum) were used. The pen (calamus, 
arundo) was made of a reed cut to a 
point; the ink was of lampblack, made 
from burnt pitch or rosin and gum- 
water. The dark fluid obtained from 
the cuttle-fish sometimes served for 
ink. As papyrus and parchment were 
expensive it was customary to use in 
schools only the backs of worthless 
manuscripts. MartiaP mentions this 
as the probable fate of an unsuccessful 
book. Quintilian^ recommends the 
use of tablets in preference to parch- 
ment, because the former lent them- 
selves more readily to erasures, and 

1 Ep. IV. 86. II. In versa pueris arande charta. 

2 Instit. Orat. X. 3. 31. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 85 

the course of thought was not inter- 
rupted by the need of dipping the pen 
in the ink; only in the case of weak 
sight was parchment to be preferred. 

The study of arithmetic held a con- 
spicuous position in Roman schools, 
and was begun at an early age. The 
vast commercial and financial interests 
which the Romans had formed through- 
out the civilized world after the con- 
quest of the East, of Africa, and of 
Western Europe, and the consequent 
establishment of a large moneyed class 
in the city itself, gave rise, as we have 
already said, to an ambition of wealth 
which invaded every class of the com- 
munity, and consequently added to 
the importance of the branch of edu- 
cation most conducive to the attain- 



S6 EDUCATION OF 

merit of this ambition. Sallust^ says 
that two of the most glaring vices of 
the late period of the Republic were 
those "pessuma ac divorsa inter se 
mala," luxury and avarice, and we 
have seen how Horace and Juvenal 
satirized the prevalent worship of 
money. But besides this, the Romans 
were very methodical in their house- 
hold affairs and kept a careful account 
of receipts and expenditures, so that 
a knowledge of arithmetic was neces- 
sary to every head of a household. 
And a careful training was especially 
demanded by the cumbrous system of 
numerical signs which the Romans 
used. 

Their notation was on the decimal 
1 Cat. 5. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 87 

system, but in fractions they generally 
employed a duodecimal denomination, 
derived from the division of the as 
into twelve uncice. Horace ^ presents 
a scene in a school in which a boy is 
being taught addition and subtraction 
of fractions. "'Let the son of 
Albinus, ' asks the teacher, 'tell me 
what is left if one-twelfth is taken 
from five-twelfths. You used to know. ' 
'A third.' 'Right; you will be able 
to take care of your money. If one- 
twelfth is added what results?' 'A 
half.'" Even where the quantity to 
be divided had no reference to money 
the terms used for fractional parts were 
usually the divisions of the as. Thus 
deunx meant eleven-twelfths, quincunx 

1 Ars Poet. 326. 



88 ' EDUCATION OF 

five-twelfths, and so on. "Heres ex 
asse " meant "heir to the whole es- 
tate," "heres ex dodrante," "heir to 
three-fourths." When the numerator 
of a fraction was unity the fraction 
could be readily expressed by means 
of the ordinal numeral, e.g. one-tenth 
would be decima (sc. pars), one- 
seventh septima, etc. 

The Roman numerical signs are 
familiar to everybody. To facilitate 
calculations an abacus or reckoning 
board was used. It was rectangular, 
but usually longer one way than the 
other, and was marked with parallel 
grooves, in which the pebbles (calculi) 
that denoted the numbers were moved. 
According to one system the pebbles 
on the lowest row denoted units, those 



CHILDREN AT ROME 89 

on the next tens, and so on, the sev- 
enth groove from the bottom denoting 
millions. These seven grooves were 
each divided into two unequal parts, 
a pebble in the shorter section of each 
groove denoting five times as much as 
one in the longer. For example, one 
pebble in the longer section of the 
second groove (that of the tens) would 
denote ten, but one in the shorter 
section fifty, and if there were one in 
each section they would together 
denote sixty. To express on the 
board the number 3748 there would 
be in the lowest groove one pebble in 
the shorter section and three in the 
longer (8) ; in the second groove from 
the bottom, four pebbles in the longer 
section (4 tens); the third groove 



90 EDUCATION OF 

would have one pebble in the shorter 
and two in the longer section (7 hun- 
dreds); and the fourth groove three 
in the longer section (3 thousands). 
There were also some grooves which 
were used in the calculation of frac- 
tions.-^ 

The Romans had an elaborate 
conventional method of expressing 
numbers by means of the fingers 
(digitis computare). By the fingers 
of the left hand could be expressed 
all the numbers from i to 100, by 
those on the right all the hundreds 
and thousands as far as 10,000, so 
that by using both hands together any 

1 A good account of the Roman abacus (with 
plate) is to be found in the Encyclopedia Britan- 



CHILDREN AT ROME 9 1 

number up to 10,000 could be de- 
noted. It must have required long 
practice to be able to express or 
understand at once any number with 
a notation of this kind, but it was a 
necessary piece of knowledge, Quin- 
tilian says,^ "not only for the orator 
but for everybody who pretended to 
the slightest education. In pleading 
causes it comes very frequently into 
use; and if the pleader is flurried in 
expressing his totals, or even if by an 
uncertain or ungraceful motion of the 
fingers he indicates the wrong number, 
he is set down as uneducated." 

The operations of addition, subtrac- 
tion, multiplication, and division were 
probably all performed with the aid 

1 Instit. Orat. I. 10. 35. 



92 EDUCATION OF 

of the abacus (as some of the Latin 
terms for these operations show — e.g. 
subtraction = deducere calculos), at 
least until the results of the more 
simple operations were memorized, 
and then the abacus would be used 
only for the more elaborate calcula- 
tions. The great defects in the Roman 
numerical notation were the absence 
of a sign for zero, and the fact that 
the digits were not each expressed by 
a single numeral, but most of them 
{e.g. III., VII.) by a combination of 
numerals. These defects stood in the 
way of the discovery of the simple 
methods for the elementary arithmeti- 
cal operations which our more perfect 
notation (derived from the Hindoos) 
makes possible for us. Consequently 



CHILDREN AT ROME 93 

the Study of arithmetic in Roman 
schools was tedious, and we are not 
surprised that if any readiness in cal- 
culation was to be obtained at all 
with the clumsy notation then in use, 
the careful drilling in arithmetic de- 
scribed by Horace was quite necessary. 



94 EDUCATION OF 



CHAPTER VI 

THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS 

In the secondary schools, presided 
over by the grammaticus or litteratus, 
studies were directed towards the 
attainment of one main object — 
mastery of language. It has already 
been observed how highly the Romans 
prized a ready and correct command 
of their mother-tongue, and how their 
peculiar institutions and mode of life 
made it a matter of much importance 
for them to be able to speak well. 
Consequently we find that in the school 
of the grammaticus attention was given 



CHILDREN AT ROME 95 

to every study that was likely to be of 
value in forming a correct style of 
speaking and writing. The poets and 
other authors were studied, both for 
the material and moral instruction to 
be found in them, and in no less 
degree for the sake of their style. 
And to appreciate the poets properly, 
especially the lyric poets, some know- 
ledge of music was thought useful. 
The numerous allusions to the heav- 
enly bodies in the poets called for 
some acquaintance with the facts of 
astronomy, but this was probably 
imparted only incidentally and not as 
a special study. A training in geom- 
etry was beneficial in sharpening the 
intellect and enabling it to detect 
fallacies, as well as for the practical 



g6 EDUCATION OF 

information conveyed by it. The 
greatest share of attention, however, 
was devoted to orthography, grammar, 
pronunciation, and literary style. 

After the conquest of the East by 
Rome the Greek language gradu^ly 
forced its way into the educated 
classes of Roman society, so that as 
early as the time of Marius it was 
something unusual when a man of 
distinction was unfamiliar with it. 
Marius ^ indeed feigned to consider it 
a merit on his part that he was igno- 
rant of the literature of a conquered 
people, but it is not difficult to see 
that he felt he was boasting of a thing 
which most men of his time would 
have regarded as a misfortune. There 
1 Sallust Jugurth. 85. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 97 

were at Rome Greek as well as Roman 
grammatici, who gave instruction in 
their own language similar to that 
imparted in the Latin schools. It 
was usual for the Greek instruction to 
begin earlier than the Latin. Quin- 
tilian -^ even recommends that a child 
should learn to speak Greek before 
Latin, because he must learn Latin in 
the natural course of things without 
effort, but he does not approve of 
maintaining very long the habit of 
speaking Greek only, lest the purity 
of the child's Latin be spoiled. He 
tells us "^ that his own eldest son at the 
age of ten could speak Greek as if it 
were his mother-tongue. Homer and 

1 Instit. Orat. I. i, 12, 13. 

2 Instit. Orat. VI., Prooem. 11. 



98 EDUCATION OF 

Menander were two of the Greek 
authors whose works were favourites 
as text-books. 

In teaching orthography care was 
taken to explain the phonetic values 
of the different letters. Vowels were 
distinguished from consonants, and 
these again were divided into mutes 
and semivowels. The variation in 
the sound of certain letters according 
to their position in words and the 
influence of neighbouring sounds was 
pointed out, as for example^ the 
difference between vocalic and con- 
sonantal / and u, that between the 
sounds of i in opinius and optimus, 
and the ambiguous sound of the final 
e in bene. The history of the letters 

1 Quintilian I. 4. 8 sq. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 99 

was also touched upon, with remarks 
on redundant or adventitious charac- 
ters, as K, H, Q, and Z. There were 
explanations of the peculiarities, com- 
mon qualities, and mutual relation- 
ships of different sounds; why from 
scamnum scabillum was formed, and 
bipennis from pinna. Attention was 
called to the changes which the vowels 
in simple verbs underwent in compo- 
sition with prepositions, as in excidere 
from cadere; to the variations of the 
vowel sounds in different tenses, as in 
lotus from lavo ; to the substitution of 
r for s in Valesii, afbos, etc., while in 
other words s had supplanted /; to the 
transliteration of Greek words into 
Latin; to ancient forms like duellum, 
stlites, etc. 



lOO EDUCATION OF 

The regularly phonetic character of 
Latin rendered correct spelling a much 
easier acquirement than it is in our 
language. After the careful training 
in syllable-spelling that was required 
before the pupil was allowed to begin 
to read, there was no need for the 
grammaticus to trouble himself with 
instruction in the spelling of ordinary 
words; it was only in cases of varying 
usage that his help was needed. Such 
doubtful words were (in Quintilian's 
time) exspecto or expecto, ad or at. 
When a difference of spelling could 
be used (as in these two cases) to in- 
dicate a difference of meaning, it was 
thought well to take advantage of it. 
The question of the division of words 
into syllables was also treated, espe- 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 01 

cially in words which presented diffi- 
culty, as absfeinius, haruspex. Notice 
was taken of differences between an- 
cient and modern orthography; as, 
for example, of the ancient custom of 
doubling long vowels, and s after a 
long vowel; of writing ic instead of i 
in optumiis, maxuitms, etc. Quin- 
tilian^ lays down the sensible rule 
that unless where custom has definitely 
established the orthography, words 
ought to be written as they are pro- 
nounced. "For this is the use of 
written characters: to preserve the 
spoken sound as a trust confided to 
them and give it up to the reader; 
they ought, therefore, to indicate the 
sound which is to be uttered." 
1 1. 7. 30. 



I02 EDUCATION OF 

The study of grammar began with 
the parts of speech, the number of 
which was differently given by differ- 
ent authorities. Varro in one place ^ 
mentions only three kinds of words, 
— those which have case, those which 
have tense, and those which have 
neither; but farther on^ he adds a 
fourth kind, those which have both, 
i.e. the participles. Palsemon distin- 
guished eight parts of speech ^ — noun, 
pronoun, verb, adverb, participle, 
preposition, conjunction, and inter- 
jection. Other authorities increased 
the number by distinguishing nouns 
into two or three different kinds and 

1 De Lingua Latina, VIII. ii. 
2 /^z^. VIII. 44. 

3 See Ludwig Jeep's Geschichte der Lehre von 
den Redetheilen, Introd, p. x. 



CHILDREN AT ROME IO3 

giving special names to certain classes 
of adverbs or conjunctions. Strangely 
enough, it was not until the time 
of Priscian (about 450 a.d.) that the 
adjective was regarded as a distinct 
part of speech and received a special 
name; until that time it was classed 
with the nouns. 

As inflection played so important a 
part in Latin it was natural that much 
time should be spent in the schools 
on the declensions and conjugations. 
A classification of declensions, how- 
ever, corresponding to that which we 
find in our Latin grammars, was not 
made until the fourth or fifth century 
A.D. When a question arose as to the 
declension of a noun an appeal was 
made to authorities; where these dis- 



I04 EDUCATION OF 

agreed a solution was sought in the 
analogy of other words. The several 
cases were derived from the nomina- 
tive rather than from the genitive, 
and this naturally caused difficulties 
when nouns terminated alike in the 
nominative, as lepus and lupus, but 
were differently declined. For these 
seeming irregularities explanations 
were offered which were more or less 
wide of the mark owing to the funda- 
mental mistake of deriving the oblique 
cases from the nominative. Pedantry 
was a not uncommon fault of Roman 
scholars. There were some of them 
who were unwilling to recognize the 
principle laid down by Quintilian,^ 
"consuetude certissima loquendi 

1 Instit. Orat. I. 6. 3. 



CHILDREN AT ROME IO5 

magistra," and where the popular 
usage seemed contrary to analogy 
they sought to correct the custom by 
insisting on forms to which no objec- 
tion from analogy could be made. 
Thus they used emicavit for efnicuitj 
conire for coire, and wrote ebor and 
robor instead of ebuj" and robur. 

Grammar was a study for which the 
Roman mind had a peculiar bent, just 
as it had for law; it had also a fondness 
for philological studies, and in schools 
the derivation of a word was often 
appealed to in order to settle a ques- 
tion of orthography or pronunciation. 
The study was still in its infancy and 
often a matter of random guesswork, 
which produced such extravagances 
as pituita from petere vitani, and of 



I06 EDUCATION OF 

me7'ula from ine7'a zwlare ; but even 
teachers of sane judgment made use 
of it in a moderate degree to excite 
in their pupils an interest in language, 
and sometimes to throw a light on his- 
tory and ancient institutions. 

There does not seem to have been 
much systematic examination of syn- 
tactical constructions, such as we have 
in our schools. Grammar was not yet 
formulated or brought into system 
with definite classifications and stated 
rules. There is no appearance of 
exercises in parsing or analysis of 
sentences. Faults in construction 
or in the forms of words were cor- 
rected when they occurred; the pupil, 
however, was probably not provided 
with rules ready made for his guidance, 



CHILDREN AT ROME IO7 

but allowed to form his own induc- 
tions from experience. 

Extensive intercourse with foreign 
nations, and especially the presence 
in the city of so many Greeks and 
other foreigners, rendered it necessary 
to exercise great diligence in order to 
keep the language free from foreign 
contamination. Accordingly we find ^ 
that much attention was given in 
schools to a studied correctness of dic- 
tion, and pupils were warned against 
using foreign, obsolete, or wrongly 
formed words. There were some 
speakers and writers who affected 
Greek and other foreign words even 
where there were good Latin equiva- 
lents, and this was a habit which the 

^ Quintilian I. 5. 6 sq. 



I08 EDUCATION OF 

best teachers condemned. Others 
were fond of obsolete expressions — a 
fault which had especial temptation 
for Roman orators, as a high value 
was set on dignified and stately dic- 
tion, which seemed to be attained by 
using words that bore the stamp of 
antiquity. The appeal in all ques- 
tions of doubt with regard to choice 
of words was to be decided by custom, 
and, as Quintilian^ says, custom in 
language is the consensus of the learned, 
as in morals it is the consensus of the 



Correct pronunciation was also dili- 
gently cultivated. One of the faults 
of most frequent occurrence and 
requiring to be most carefully guarded 
11.6. 45. 



CHILDREN AT ROME IO9 

against was the misuse of the aspirate. 
There was considerable variation in 
its use from time to time, so that in 
some words (e.g. herus, triumphus) it 
was sometimes employed and some- 
times omitted. Catullus ^ ridiculed a 
certain Arrius who aspirated all his 
initial vowels and consonants. An- 
other common fault, especially among 
the lower classes, was that of pro- 
nouncing the diphthong au as o. 

For exercises in reading, to which 
much time and attention were given, 
the works of the poets were first used. 
The authors were chosen with a view 
both to cultivating the taste and to 
inculcating moral principles. It was 
recognized that the old Latin writers, 

1 Catullus LXXXIV. 



no EDUCATION OF 

Ennius, Accius, Pacuvius, etc., were 
not to be taken as models of style, 
though their genius was appreciated; 
their style was heavy and sometimes 
inflated; but their high moral tone 
and manly spirit were regarded as 
valuable correctives of the moral laxity 
and meretriciousness of the writings of 
a late period.^ Of later authors Ver- 
gil was the greatest favourite, and the 
^neid was generally the first reading- 
book used in the school of the gram- 
maticus. Heroic poetry was thought 
to be the best food for the young 
mind; the noble theme inspired lofty 
thoughts and filled the youthful heart 
with aspirations after what was brave 
and honourable, while reading of this 

1 Quintilian I. 8. 9. 



CHILDREN AT ROME III 

kind caused an early familiarity with 
correct and elevated diction. Horace 
was also a common school text-book, 
and the comic writers Plautiis and 
Terence were sometimes read ; the 
latter especially for the sake of his 
style. Elegiac and hendecasyllabic 
poetry was, owing to its usual erotic 
character, unsuited for use in schools. 
Lucretius was probably read only by 
advanced pupils. Portions of these 
authors were also selected to be com- 
mitted to memory. 

In reading, the pupil was taught to 
mark by a pause and by the modula- 
tion of his voice the conclusion of 
sentences and the divisions of verses, 
to raise and lower his voice at the 
proper places, and to regulate his 



112 EDUCATION OF 

speed and expression according to 
the characters of the subject. The 
chief excellences sought after in read- 
ing were a manly style of elocution/ 
an earnestness without harshness, and 
the observance of a just mean between 
reading the poetry as if it were prose 
and the contrary fault of a sing-song 
rendering into which young pupils 
are so apt to fall. In rendering the 
speeches or dialogues in a poem, a 
theatrical manner was avoided, but 
there was a certain modulation of the 
voice by which such passages were 
distinguished from those in which the 
poet spoke in his own person. 

Before the pupil read his lesson the 
teacher probably first read it over for 

1 Quintilian I. 8. 2. 



CHILDREN AT ROME II3 

him (praelegere), in order to show him 
how he wished it to be done. Then 
he made the sense of the passage clear, 
knowing that the first requisite of 
good reading is a thorough under- 
standing. Difficult words and histor- 
ical and mythological allusions were 
explained, and attention was called 
to poetical licenses, foreign words, 
figures of speech, unusual turns of 
expression, and the varying senses of 
words according to their context. 
Occasion was taken to impress on 
the pupil's mind the importance of 
orderly arrangement, and of the suit- 
able treatment of different subjects 
and characters, to point out beauties 
of sentiment and diction, and to 
explain how in one place diffuseness, 



114 EDUCATION OF 

in another brevity, is desirable. To 
insure his perfect understanding of a 
passage the pupil was required to give 
a prose paraphrase of it, and to explain 
its metrical construction. Moral les- 
sons were drawn from the words of the 
poet, and it was explained how the 
poet's fancy might make use of ficti- 
tious situations and characters to 
present valuable truths. 

Thus the reading lessons from the 
poets were made the means of instruc- 
tion in many different subjects — prac- 
tical ethics, grammar, composition, 
elocution, geography, mythology, and 
history. History was, moreover, made 
the subject of a separate lesson, in 
which the works of great historians 
were read. This study seems to have 



CHILDREN AT ROME II5 

been pushed to" an unreasonable length 
by some teachers, who included in it 
the most trivial and insignificant de- 
tails and ransacked obscure works for 
old-wives' fables.^ Among Latin his- 
torians the favourites were Sallust and 
Livy. The former was commended 
for his sententious brevity, in which 
he was compared with Thucydides, 
though this merit was gained at the 
cost of perspicuity; the latter for his 
eloquence, clearness, and dramatic 
power. 

The fables of ^sop were used for 

1 Quintilian I. 8. 19. No distinction seems to 
have been made between mythology and history, 
so that some teachers thought it of importance to 
know the name of Anchises' nurse, or how many 
casks of wine Acestes gave the Trojans (Juv. 
VII. 229). 



Il6 EDUCATION OF 

lessons in composition. The pupils 
were required to relate a fable in their 
own words and in the simplest lan- 
guage, without attempting any orna- 
mentation; then they were asked to 
write it out in the same simple style. 
When they had acquired sufficient 
skill in this kind of exercise they 
were allowed to introduce embellish- 
ments of their own, to curtail some 
parts and expand others, only preserv- 
ing the general sense of the original. 
Narratives from the poets were also 
treated in this manner. Other exer- 
cises in composition were those called 
sententiae, chriae, and ethologise. 
Sententise were moral sentiments or 
proverbs which the pupils took as 
subjects for essays. Chrise were 



CHILDREN AT ROME II7 

accounts of something said or done 
on a specific occasion. Ethologiae 
were probably speeches in character, 
such as the assertion of the tyrant 
Eteocles that wrong-doing was excus- 
able when its object was sovereign 
power. 

Great importance was attached to 
exercises of the memory, and espe- 
cially to learning by heart passages of 
poetry. The poetical works used in 
the reading-lesson served this purpose 
also, and part of every day's school- 
work was the recitation of memorized 
pieces. Pupils also learned by heart 
their own compositions and recited 
them before the assembled school.* 

1 Krause (Geschichte der Erziehung bei den 
Griechen, Etruskern und Romerri, p. 317) errone- 



Il8 EDUCATION OF 

Much attention was given to correct 
pronunciation and appropriate ges- 
tures, the actors in comedies being 
taken as models. A theatrical man- 
ner, however, was avoided; what was 
aimed at was an expressive but quiet 
and dignified delivery, with a distinct 
enunciation and avoidance of affecta- 
tion. Faults to be avoided were a 
lisping s, the softening of r to /, of c 
to /, and of g to d. Care was taken 
that the expression of the face should 
correspond with the words and ges- 
ture, and that no extravagant or 

ously states that Quintilian (II. 7. i) thought 
that children were obliged to memorize too 
much. What Quintilian blamed was the practice 
of making children learn by heart a/l that they 
wrote themselves, when their time might be better 
employed in learning passages from good authors. 



CHILDREN AT ROME II9 

unseemly contortions of the features 
or motions of the head were made. 
Lessons were taken from a palaestricus 
or instructor in calisthenics^ for the 
purpose of acquiring an easy and 
graceful carriage of the body and 
getting rid of awkwardness in the 
movements of the hands and feet. 

Pliny ^ speaks highly of the practice, 
which he says had many advocates, of 
translating from Greek into Latin or 
from Latin into Greek; aptness and 
brilliancy of language, command of 
expression, and forceful statement 
were acquired by it, and the habit of 

1 Quintilian I. 11. 16. 

2 Ep. VII. 9. 2. quo genere exercitationis 
proprietas splendorque verborum, copia figura- 
rum, vis expHcandi, prseterea imitatione opti- 
morum similia inveniendi facultas paratur. 



I20 EDUCATION OF 

copying the best models produced an 
ability to write like them. So that it 
is not unlikely that exercises in trans- 
lation from and into Greek formed 
part of the tasks in the school of the 
grammaticus. 

Although the Romans were by no 
means a musical people, they were not 
without capacity for enjoying certain 
kinds of music, and they did not fail 
to observe what a powerful influence 
it was capable of exerting on the 
mind. Music, however, never ob- 
tained among them the honourable 
position it occupied among the 
Greeks. They enjoyed at a banquet 
the songs of the female minstrels with 
their accompaniments on the lyre, and 
at dramatic performances the choruses 



CHILDREN AT ROME 121 

of boys and the strains of the tibia or 
clarionet, and they believed that the 
inspiriting notes of the trumpet did 
much towards winning their battles; 
but the profession of music was in 
low repute at Rome. In order to 
show the advantages of a musical 
education Quintilian^ feels it neces- 
sary to argue at considerable length, 
pointing out how in former times no 
man, whether poet, philosopher, or 
orator, was regarded as properly edu- 
cated without it. Plato, he urges, 
required it of the citizens of his 
model republic; Lycurgus approved 
of musical training for the Spartan 
youth. For the orator it had special 
advantages; for music consists of 

1 Instit. Orat. I. lo. 



122 EDUCATION OF 

rhythm and melody, and what are the 
modulations and tones of the speaking 
voice but a sort of melody? The 
orator must adapt the modulation of 
his voice to the subject-matter, just as 
in music different subjects require 
different melodies. The effeminate 
and immodest music of the stage, 
however, Quintilian does not com- 
mend; the useful kind is that in 
which the praises of brave men are 
sung. What the orator needs is a 
knowledge of the principles of music, 
which is so powerful an agent in 
stirring or calming the emotions. 
From this we can gather that it was 
the theory rather than the practice of 
music that was taught in the schools. 
The position of geometry in school 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 23 

education at Rome was not a promi- 
nent one. It was recognized that it 
furnished a valuable intellectual train- 
ing, but as it was only the elementary 
part which seemed to have much 
practical value, the study was not car- 
ried very far. "Among the Greeks," 
says Cicero,^ "geometry was in the 
highest honour, but we have set the 
limits of this science at its practical 
applicability in measuring and calcu- 
lating." Quintilian ^ was disposed to 
give it a higher importance than was 
generally accorded to it in his time. 
He thought that it afforded excellent 
examples of syllogistic reasoning and 
was of assistance in exposing fallacies. 
It had a philosophical and theological 

1 Tusc. Disp. I. 2. 5. 2 instit. Orat. I. 10. o^'j sq. 



124 EDUCATION OF 

value also, for when applied to the 
system of the universe it showed the 
fixed and ordered courses of the stars 
and furnished a proof that nothing is 
fortuitous or unordained. From the 
space which Quintilian finds it neces- 
sary to devote to the proof of the 
elementary fact that the area of a 
square is greater than that of another 
rectangle of equal perimeter, we must 
conclude that geometry was not very 
carefully studied, and that the twelve 
books of Euclid did not form part of 
the school curriculum. 



CHILDREN AT ROME I 25 



CHAPTER VII 

PEDAGOGICAL IDEAS OF THE ROMANS 

We find in Roman writers frequent 
expressions of the opinion that of the 
two factors which contribute to the 
character of a man — nature and edu- 
cation — the former is much the more 
important. In the speech for the poet 
Archias,^ where it is Cicero's object 
to glorify culture, he is still con- 
strained to admit that many men have 
attained high distinction for moral 
and intellectual qualities without edu- 
cation, and he can only claim that the 
1 c. 7. 



126 EDUCATION OF 

best results are obtained when to 
unusual natural talents has been added 
a systematic cultivation of them. In 
more than one passage in his philo- 
sophical works he dwells on the " in- 
credibilis vis naturse," and although 
he also points out that education may 
do much towards correcting natural 
defects or improving natural gifts, he 
is plainly of the opinion that without 
natural talent to work upon education 
is useless. Similarly Horace declares ^ 
that a rich vein of talent is essential 
to success, and that though we may 
pitchfork nature out ^ she will always 
find her way back again. Juvenal 
says that nature is fixed and unchange- 
able^ and more influential than the 
1 Ars Poet. 409. 2 Epp. I. 10. 24. s xill. 240. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 127 

diligence of any guardian.^ Accord- 
ing to Seneca^ nature is importunate 
(contumax), cannot be overcome, 
demands her own. Quintilian warns 
his readers in the preface to his 
Institutio that his book is as little 
intended for persons devoid of natural 
talents as a treatise on agriculture is 
for a barren waste; and in another 
place ^ he says that where education 
and natural talent are present in only 
a small degree the latter is the more 
important. He adds that consum- 
mate orators owe more to education 
than to nature, just as in a fertile 
land cultivation will produce more 
than the mere excellence of the soil 
itself can ; but that an entirely barren 
1 X. 302. 2 Ep. 119. 3 n. 19. 



125 EDUCATION OF 

soil will yield nothing under the most 
skilful cultivation. 

These writers, however, were by no 
means disposed to undervalue the 
benefits of education when there was 
a good soil in which to sow the seed. 
In particular they urged the advantage 
of beginning the formative process in 
early childhood, when the mind is 
still tender and plastic. We have 
seen how Quintilian strongly advised 
the greatest diligence on the part of 
parents from the very first, and how 
he insisted on the influence which a 
child's environment had upon his 
moral and intellectual development. 

When so much stress was laid on 
the importance of natural endowments, 
it was only consistent that teachers 



CHILDREN AT ROME I 29 

should be expected to consider care- 
fully the different characters and 
classes of mind with which they had 
to deal. "Plurima sunt juvenum 
discrimina," says Juvenal;^ the para- 
dox that everybody is born with equal 
natural gifts and that differences of 
character are all produced by differ- 
ences of training found no supporters 
among the Romans. There were 
among them, as among us, boys on 
whom nature seemed to have lavished 
every intellectual gift, while others 
showed scarcely a sign of mental 
ability. The Roman schoolmaster 
knew what it was to be blamed by 
parents for the natural stupidity of 
their son — ^ 

1 Sat. X. 196. 2 Ibid. VII. 158. 

K 



130 EDUCATION OF 

Culpa docentis 
Scilicet arguitur quod lasva in parte mamillae 
Nil salit Arcadio juveni. 

But his lot was lightened by the fact 
that there were some youths who 
seemed to be made of better clay,^ 

quibus arte benigna 
Et meliore luto finxit prsecordia Titan. 

Cicero frequently urges the teacher to 
consider the individual dispositions 
of his pupils. " It is the duty of an 
intelligent teacher," he remarks in the 
Brutus,'-^ "to observe in what direction 
each pupil's mind is naturally borne, 
and to use his natural bent as a guide 
in instructing him." It is naturally 
in Quintilian that we find this ques- 

. 1 Sat. XIV. 33. 2 Brutus LVI. 204. 



CHILDREN AT ROME I3I 

tion treated with greatest fullness and 
most strongly emphasized. He says, 
indeed,^ "that a father ought from the 
first to form the best hopes of his 
son; that intelligence and readiness of 
thought and speech are as natural to 
man as flying is to birds, so that stupid 
and unteachable persons are mere 
monsters." But he adds that there 
are degrees of ability, and in another 
place ^ he dwells on the duty of dis- 
tinguishing between them, and men- 
tions certain indications by which 
talent may be discerned in the young. 
The surest sign of ability, he says, is 
memory, which is of two kinds, ready 
apprehension and faithful retention. 
Next is power of imitation, but imita- 
1 Instit. Orat. I. 1. 1. 2 md, I. 3. ad init. 



132 EDUCATION OF 

tion of what is learnt, not of gait, 
dress, etc. The boy who excites laugh- 
ter by mimicry gives little promise of 
good ability. The really promising 
boy is one who receives instruction 
readily, asks for information, and 
follows rather than tries to lead. The 
precocious child seldom reaches a 
productive maturity. He does small 
things easily, is self-confident, and 
displays at once all his powers. He 
can do only that which is nearest to 
hand, string words together and utter 
them with unabashed countenance. 
He accomplishes not much but quickly. 
He has no true power springing from 
deep roots; like seed which, sown on 
the surface of the soil, springs up 
rapidly and yields a worthless crop of 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 33 

empty ears before the true harvest- 
time. His precocity is admired at 
first when compared with his years; 
afterwards his progress is arrested and 
he excites wonder no more. 

The next step, Quintilian con- 
tinues/ is to consider how the differ- 
ent temperaments are to be treated. 
Some need to be urged, others are 
impatient of control; some are re- 
strained by fear, others only weak- 
ened; some are best moulded by 
persistent diligence, in others more 
is accomplished by impulse. The 
best boy is he who is aroused by 
praise, delights in glory, and weeps 
when defeated. In such an one indo- 
lence will never be found. Quintilian 
1 Ibid. I. 3. 6, 7. 



134 EDUCATION OF 

does not think ^ that education should 
be directed solely to the cultivation 
of the special talents of each pupil, 
neglecting those studies for which 
little or no ability is shown, but that 
a knowledge of the tastes and capaci- 
ties of a pupil is a useful guide to his 
teacher. One mind is more adapted 
to historical studies, another to poe- 
try, another to law, while some should 
be directed to rural pursuits. But 
where nature is deficient, education 
should endeavour to supply the want. 
Vices should be checked, the barren 
soil enriched, and even the good 
qualities ought to be improved. One 
pupil may need the spur, another the 
bit. Very slender abilities should, 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 35 

indeed, be treated indulgently and 
only guided in the direction in which 
nature beckons, so that they may the 
better practise their sole talent. But 
where the material to work upon is 
more generously supplied, no kind of 
excellence must be neglected. The 
fact that a pupil has one extraordinary 
talent will not prevent him from culti- 
vating other talents also. Two things 
are to be most carefully avoided : first, 
attempting more than can be accom- 
plished, and second, diverting a pupil 
from what he does best to something 
else for which he is not so well 
adapted. 

The amount of study required of 
children at Rome seems to have been 
at least equal to that demanded in our 



136 EDUCATION OF 

own schools. The ancients were thor- 
oughly convinced of the fact that 
nothing that is valuable is obtained 
without labour : 

Nil sine magno 
Vita labore dedit mortalibus.^ 

But wise teachers were aware of the 
danger of making children dislike 
study by overloading them with it, 
and considered it essential that they 
should be interested in what they had 
to learn. Every means was used to 
induce pupils to devote themselves 
heartily to their studies. We have 
mentioned some of the means em-, 
ployed to interest little children in 
learning the alphabet.^ With older 
pupils the chief incentives to study 

1 Horace Sat. I. 9. 59. 2 Supra, p. 47. 



CHILDREN AT ROME I37 

were those of praise and blame and 
mutual rivalry. It was customary ^ to 
arrange pupils in classes, in order of 
merit, so that those who stood highest 
recited first. This caused a warm com- 
petition, and it was thought a great 
honour to lead the class. At the end 
of every month there was a new dis- 
tribution of places according to the 
merit shown during the month, so that 
those in the higher places could not 
afford to relax their diligence, and 
the others were incited to industry 
with the hope of removing their 
disgrace. 

In awarding praise and blame it 
was recognized that care ought to be 
taken not to cause undue elation or 
1 Qjiintilian I. 2. 23. 



138 EDUCATION OF 

self-conceit on the one hand, or 
dejection on the other. ^ It was the 
teacher's duty to be kindly in correct- 
ing faults; ^ to praise some points, and 
pass over others, sometimes making 
alterations and giving reasons for 
them, and throwing a light on the 
subject by inserting something of his 
own. Different ages required differ- 
ent treatment in correcting faults. 
Quintilian used to say to boys who 
displayed too much boldness and 
exuberance in their compositions, 
"I approve of this for the present, but 
later on I shail not sanction it." Thus, 
he says, they were pleased with their 
success, while their judgment was not 

1 Plutarch, De Lib. Educ. XII. 

2 Quintilian II. 4. 12. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 39 

misled. "In correcting mistakes," 
he remarks elsewhere/ "a. teacher 
must not be harsh, and never insult- 
ing ; for many pupils are deterred 
from their intention of studying by 
the fact that teachers sometimes scold 
as if from hatred." 

Another means of enforcing indus- 
try and preserving good order was the 
use of corporal punishment, which was 
generally employed in Roman schools, 
though the most enlightened educators, 
as Quintilian and Plutarch, entered 
an emphatic protest against it. The 
teacher was entrusted with a parent's 
authority over the pupils under his 
charge, and to judge from various 
scattered references in literature, he 
1 II. 2. 7. 



I40 EDUCATION OF 

made a frequent and liberal use of the 
parent's privilege of chastising his 
children. The instrument ordinarily 
used was a thin rod (ferula, virga), 
which was . generally applied to the 
hands. JuvenaP says that he knew 
what it was to wince as he held out 
his hand to receive the stroke of the 
rod, and Martial ^ speaks of the 

" Ferulae tristes, sceptra psedagogorum." 

For more severe punishment it seems 
to have been applied to a different 
part of the body. A fresco discovered 
at Herculaneum shows how the pun- 
ishment was administered.^ A boy is 
represented as naked, except that a 

1 I. 15. 2 X. 62. 10. 

3 O. Jahn, quoted by Grasberger, Erziehung 
und Unterricht, Vol. II., p. loi. 



CHILDREN AT ROME I4I 

sort of apron is thrown around his 
waist. He is mounted on the back of 
another boy, who keeps fast hold of 
both of his arms, while a third boy, 
kneeling down, grasps him by the legs 
so that he is unable to stir. A young 
man stands by and administers a flog- 
ging with a switch. " That this young 
man is in earnest about it is shown 
by the expression with which he 
swings the rod (lifting his right leg 
a little at the same time) and by the 
cries which the boy who is being 
punished raises. Further in the back- 
ground a rather indistinct figure ap- 
proaches, bringing with him, as it 
seems, fresh switches." 

Other instruments of punishment 
were the thongs (scutica, lorum) and 



142 EDUCATION OF 

the whip (flagellum) . The former 
was the less severe and used for 
smaller offences;^ indeed the flagel- 
lum was probably not used in schools, 
but only for punishing slaves. Orbil- 
ius, Horace's schoolmaster, was noted 
as a man of harsh temper who used 
the rod and thong unsparingly. This 
reputation apparently did not prevent 
his school from being largely attended, 
for though he died a poor man, Sue- 
tonius^ says that he enjoyed consider- 
able celebrity as a teacher. He had 
been a soldier in early life, and car- 
ried the discipline of the camp into 
the school. 

It is hardly a matter for wonder that 

1 Horace, Sat. I. 3. 119. 2 De Gram. IX. 
docuit maiore fama quam emolumento. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 43 

the Romans had to wait for men like 
Quintilian and Plutarch to raise a 
voice against corporal punishment in 
the education of children, when we 
consider the undoubted fact that the 
rod has some advantages over every 
other means of maintaining order and 
enforcing diligence. It is always 
ready to hand, so that the punish- 
ment can follow immediately on the 
offence; the punishment is soon over, 
but is, nevertheless, of a kind which 
the pupil is extremely anxious to avoid 
for the future; it is certainly, in judi- 
cious hands, a very effective means of 
discipline; it dispenses with much 
talking and somehow often carries to 
the delinquent's mind a more pene- 
trating conviction that he has done 



144 EDUCATION OF 

wrong than many words will produce; 
it is an argument quite unanswerable 
by the party to whom it is addressed; 
and (what has always been one of its 
strongest, though unspoken, recom- 
mendations) it affords an immediate 
and satisfactory alleviation to the in- 
jured feelings of the teacher. These 
considerations will account for its 
long and undisputed sway in the 
schools of Greece and Rome, and its 
no less honoured position, until recent 
times, in the schools of Western 
Europe and America. It would in- 
deed seem as if there must have been 
less necessity for its use in Roman 
schools than in our own. Roman 
children, whose early training was not 
neglected, had impressed on them 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 45 

from their infancy as one of their 
most imperative duties the obligation 
of respect for their elders and rever- 
ence for authority. The child was 
taught to look on his father and 
teachers as examples to be imitated, 
and to seek and profit by their coun- 
sel. Modesty in speech and action 
and unquestioning obedience were 
regarded as a child's chief virtues. 
Under such circumstances as these 
one might suppose that the teacher's 
influence over his pupils, and their 
awe for him, would have been so great 
as to dispense with the necessity for 
the rod. We shall presently see how 
strongly Plutarch and Quintilian were 
opposed to it. No doubt corporal 
punishment was often carried to excess 



146 EDUCATION OF 

in their time. We know that it was 
very extensively employed and that 
pupils approached their teacher in 
fear and trembling, so that the oppo- 
sition of the two authors mentioned 
may, perhaps, be rather to its preva- 
lent excessive use than to a judicious 
and moderate use. Quintilian, also, 
directs his arguments mainly against 
corporal punishment used as a means 
of promoting attention to study and 
not so much against its use for enforc- 
ing obedience and discipline. 

The objections of Quintilian and 
Plutarch are founded on nearly the 
same considerations. "We ought," 
says the latter,^ "to lead children to 
good actions by reason and exhorta- 

1 De Lib. Educ. XII. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 47 

tions, and assuredly not by blows and 
torture. The latter method befits 
slaves rather than freemen; those 
punished become torpid and have a 
shuddering dislike for exertion, partly 
on account of the pain of the blows, 
partly on account of the insult. 
Praise and blame are better for free- 
men than any infliction of physical 
pain." Similarly Quintilian:^ "I am 
quite opposed to the flogging of pupils, 
although it is a received custom, of 
which Chrysippus does not disap- 
prove. In the first place, because it 
is unsightly and fit only for slaves, and 
would be admitted to be an outrage at 
a different age; in the second place, 
because if any one is of so ignoble a 
1 1- 3- 13. 



148 EDUCATION OF 

nature as not to be corrected by reproof 
he will only become hardened by 
blows, like the most worthless slaves; 
and further, because there would be 
no need for this chastisement if there 
were somebody constantly by the 
pupil's side to insist on attention to 
studies. But now the negligence of 
pedagogues seems to be rectified, not 
by compelling the boys to do what is 
right, but by punishing them for not 
doing it. Besides, if you compel a 
child by means of the lash, what are 
you to do with the young man, in 
whose case intimidation of this kind 
cannot be employed, and who has 
harder tasks to learn?" He goes on 
to mention the risks to morality in- 
curred by the practice in Roman 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 49 

schools, and concludes with the remark 
that nobody ought to be entrusted 
with too much power over an age that 
is weak and exposed to injury. 

There is little reason to doubt that 
girls as well as boys attended at least 
the elementary schools. It can also 
hardly be doubted that boys and girls 
attended the same schools together. 
On this latter point the monument to 
a schoolmaster in Capua, in which 
there is carved the figure of an old 
man sitting on a high throne with a 
boy on his right and a girl on his left, 
would seem to be conclusive. The 
story of Virginia^ shows that at a very 
early period it was customary for girls 
to go to school, and there are several 

1 Livy III. 44. 



150 EDUCATION OF 

references in literature to the practice, 
which show that it was kept up in later 
times. Martial ^ addresses the school- 
master who woke him up in the early 
morning as "invisum pueris virgini- 
busque caput." Girls must have con- 
tinued attending schools until nearly 
the age of womanhood, for Virginia 
was evidently a young woman at the 
time that she attracted the notice of 
Appius Claudius, and Martial speaks ^ 
of a poet's works forming the school- 
lesson of a "grandis virgo bonusque 
puer." The instruction of girls in the 
higher branches of learning was often 

IIX. 68. 2. 2VIII. 3: — 

An iuvat ad tragicos soccum transferre cothurnos 

Aspera vel paribus bella tonare modis ? 
Prselegat ut tumidus rauca te voce magister, 

Oderit et grandis virgo bonusque puer. 



CHILDREN AT ROME I51 

conducted after marriage by their hus- 
bands. The domestic accomplish- 
ments of weaving and spinning were 
taught even to the daughters of noble 
houses. Augustus wore on ordinary 
occasions no clothes but those which 
had been made by his sister, wife, 
daughter, or granddaughters.^ In 
schools probably girls learned only 
reading, writing, and arithmetic. But 
they read at home Greek and Roman 
literature, so that there were some 
ladies who wrote poetry and had a 
reputation for learning. The Gracchi 
owed much to the cultured mind of 
their mother Cornelia, and there were 
other Roman matrons who would not 
permit household cares to prevent 

1 Suetonius, Aug. 73. 



152 EDUCATION OF 

their engaging in artistic and literary 
studies. Juvenal ^ gives a lively sketch 
of the learned woman dining out. 
She makes herself unbearable by talk- 
ing on nothing but literary topics, 
comparing Homer and Vergil, recall- 
ing old verses that nobody else ever 
heard of, never making mistakes her- 
self but always correcting the most 
trivial errors of her friends, and seem- 
ing to know every book that was ever 
written. All the other guests, even 
the schoolmaster and rhetorician, are 
silenced. An important part of a 
lady's education was music, both vocal 
and instrumental, and to this in later 
times was added dancing. Sempronia, 
who was in league with the Catilina- 

1 Sat. VI. 434 sq. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 



53 



rian conspirators, was a bel esprit, 
learned in Roman and Greek litera- 
ture. She could play the lyre, Sallust ^ 
says, and had learned to dance almost 
too attractively. 

1 Cat. 25. 



54 EDUCATION OF 



CHAPTER VIII 

STATUS OF TEACHERS 

The position of teachers at Rome 
was not one to excite much envy. 
Thoughtful men recognized the dig- 
nity and profound importance of the 
profession on which so much of the 
future welfare of the state depended, 
but it did not enjoy a high estimation 
in general public opinion. Its ranks 
were not recruited from the higher 
classes of society; too often men who 
found it impossible to earn a living in 
any other way took to teaching as a 
last resource. There were, it is true, 



CHILDREN AT ROME 155 

conspicuous exceptions, when school- 
masters attained a high reputation and 
position, but it is noticeable that such 
cases were spoken of as instances of 
unusual good fortune. It was possible 
under the first emperors for school- 
masters to amass a considerable fort- 
une, but it sometimes also happened 
that a well-known teacher like Orbilius 
spent his last days in a garret. This 
Orbilius wrote a book under the title 
of HeptaXy-^?, in which he complained 
of the wrongs which the members of 
his profession suffered from the neglect 
and unreasoning ambition of parents. 
Juvenal^ describes the various vexa- 
tions that attended the life of the 
teacher of rhetoric or grammar. It 

1 Sat. VII. 150 sq. 



156 EDUCATION OF 

was the teacher's hard lot to listen to 
a class declaiming over and over again 
on the same hackneyed subjects, to 
endure the reluctance of parents to 
pay their sons' fees, and their fault- 
finding when their stupid boy was not 
converted into a brilliant orator. At 
the same time the schoolmaster was 
expected to be a faultless speaker, to 
know history and all literature as well 
as the nails of his fingers, to have the 
most trivial and obscure mythological 
details on the tip of his tongue, and 
in addition to watch over his pupils 
like a father and mould their morals 
as one might a waxen face. Then at 
the end of the year he might expect 
as his reward a fee no larger than that 
given to a successful gladiator. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 157 

It was usual for teachers to have a 
stated fee for their services, but in 
some cases they preferred to depend 
on the gratitude of their pupils. In 
republican Rome it was considered 
rather disreputable to make the treas- 
ures of the mind a matter of merchan- 
dise. Spurius Carvilius, a freedraan 
who lived in the middle of the third 
century B.C., is said to have been the 
first to demand and receive pay for 
-instruction. Suetonius^ mentions a 
certain Staberius Eros, a friend of 
Cicero, who was said to have taught 
gratis the children of persons pro- 
scribed by Sulla. Juvenal's account 
of the poor emoluments of teachers 
is probably overdrawn. He himself 

1 De Gram. 13. 



158 EDUCATION OF 

refers^ to the almost princely wealth 
of Quintilian, and only half a century 
earlier, M. Verrius Flaccus received 
a salary of one hundred thousand ses- 
terces (about ^4500) from Augustus 
for educating his grandchildren.^ Q. 
Remmius Palsemon, who lived under 
Tiberius and Claudius, had an in- 
come equal to ^18,000 from his school. 
Vespasian paid an annual salary of 
^4500 from the exchequer to Greek 
and Latin rhetors. The high and 
universally respected character of a 
teacher like Quintilian, whom a 
popular poet^ could without flattery 
address as 

Quintiliane vagae moderator summe iuventse, 
Gloria Romanse, Quintiliane, togse, 

1 Sat. VII. 188. 2 Suet. De Gram. 17. 

3 Martial II. 90. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 59 

must have done much to elevate in 
popular estimation the profession to 
which he belonged. 

The Emperor Diocletian made an 
attempt to relieve distress in his time 
by fixing the maximum price which 
might be demanded for commodities, 
and the maximum remuneration which 
the members of different professions 
and callings might ask for their ser- 
vices. The following is the scale of 
fees which he arranged for teachers : ^ 

Denarii 
per month. 
Pedagogues (who conducted children 

to school) 50 

Reading-masters 50 

Arithmetic masters 75 

Grammatici and teachers of geometry . 200 
Rhetoricians 250 

1 Taken from Grasberger, Erziehung und 
Unterricht, Vol. II., p. 586. 



l6o EDUCATION OF 

These were the fees paid by each 
pupil. According to Grasberger, the 
denarius had at this time scarcely one- 
eighth of its original value, so that fifty 
denarii would mean at most ^1.20, 
and at this rate even the rhetorician 
could receive only about ^6.00 per 
month for each pupil. If this esti- 
mate is correct, it would be impossible 
for a teacher, even of a large school, 
to realize nearly as large an income as 
some teachers enjoyed under the early 
emperors. But it must be remem- 
bered that the figures fixed by Diocle- 
tian were "hard-times prices." 

As has already been mentioned, 
the moral qualifications of a teacher 
received from the Romans no less 
careful attention than his intellectual 



CHILDREN AT ROME l6l 

gifts. The first consideration for 
parents in selecting a school for their 
children was the moral character of 
the teacher, and the " severitas, pudor 
at castitas " ^ of his school. There 
seems to have been no lack of school- 
masters with sufficient mental acquire- 
ments, but it was more difficult to find 
one perfectly satisfactory in moral 
character. Palaemon, whom we have 
already mentioned, was a man of 
notoriously bad character^ whom 
Tiberius thought utterly unfit to have 
charge of the education of boys and 
young men, but his vigorous mental 
qualities attracted a large attendance 
of pupils. His strong points were 
a remarkable memory and a ready 

1 Pliny, Ep. III. 3. 2 Suetonius, De Gram. 23. 



1 62 EDUCATION OF 

tongue. He indulged in such luxuri- 
ous habits (he is said to have bathed 
many times a day) that he outran his 
income, although he had a property 
that yielded him nearly as much as 
his school. 

"The teacher," says Quintilian,^ 
"ought before all to assume the feel- 
ings of a parent towards his pupils, 
and regard himself as succeeding to 
the position of those whose children 
are confided to his care. He must 
neither have nor permit vices. He 
must be strict but not gloomy, courte- 
ous but not lax, lest in the one case 
he produce hatred, or in the other 
contempt. He ought often to speak 
of what is honourable and good; for 

III. 2. 4. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 63 

the oftener he admonishes, the more 
rarely will he have to punish. He 
must be anything but hasty-tempered, 
and yet not conceal faults which need 
correction; he must teach with sim- 
plicity, must be patient of labour, and 
diligent rather than immoderate in his 
demands. He should readily answer 
questions, and question silent pupils. 
... He ought every day to say 
something, or rather many things, 
which his hearers may carry away with 
them. Though examples for imita- 
tion are amply supplied by the reading 
lessons, yet the viva vox gives more 
substantial nourishment, especially 
when it is the voice of a teacher 
whom rightly trained pupils both love 
and reverence. It can hardly be 



164 EDUCATION OF 

described how much more readily we 
imitate those whom we like." 

It was the opinion of some that the 
elementary branches could be taught 
by instructors of second-rate standing 
as effectively as by teachers of the first 
rank, or with even better results; first, 
because pupils found it easier to imitate 
and understand the inferior teacher, 
and secondly, because a teacher of 
this kind was less likely to regard the 
drudgery of elementary instruction as 
beneath him. Quintilian^ holds a 
contrary view. It is important, he 
says, to have what is best instilled 
into the mind from the beginning, 
and it is difficult to get rid of errors 
that have once taken root. It would 

1 II. 3. 2 sq. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 1 65 

not matter so much if inferior teachers 
gave only deficient and not erroneous 
instruction. Moreover, the man who 
disdains elementary instruction does 
not deserve the name of teacher, and 
he who is eminent in the higher 
branches must also be superior in 
those elementary studies which were 
the necessary preparation for his pres- 
ent high distinction. Nobody would 
say that another sculptor could have 
executed the ornamental details of the 
Zeus of Phidias better than Phidias 
himself, or that an eminent physician 
could not cure slight ailments. 

One qualification for teaching, on 
which great emphasis was laid, was 
the ability to speak good Latin. For 
the Roman who intended practising 



l66 EDUCATION OF 

at the bar or taking part in public life 
it was essential to success that he 
should be able to speak correctly and 
well. Hence the attention paid, as 
we have seen, to the language used by 
the nurses and early associates of 
children. Towards the close of the 
Republic there were two kinds of Latin 
spoken at Rome, that of cultivated 
society and that of common life.^ 
Caesar came forward as the champion 
of pure Latinity and the foe of every 
foreign word; and Cicero, who re- 
called the style of his day from its 
Asiatic tendencies to a form more in 
accordance with the genius of the 
language, left in his published works 
a literary treasure-house in which 
1 Mommsen, Roman History, Vol. IV. p. 675. 



CHILDREN AT ROME 167 

Latin writers and speakers long con- 
tinued to find their models. The 
distinguished Roman teachers were 
also often distinguished authors. 
Their most frequent fault was not 
ignorance but pedantry, which is 
often charged against them by their 
own contemporaries. Against Quin- 
tilian, indeed, the most eminent of 
them all, this charge could never 
justly be brought.^ His admirable 
work on the training of the orator is 
a monument of sound sense and broad 

1 Stein (Bildungswesen der alten Welt, p. 318) 
says that Quintilian had no opinions of his own, 
and that his value for us lies in the very fact that 
he confined himself to recording the opinions of 
his predecessors in pedagogy. To perceive the 
injustice of this criticism, nothing more is needed 
than to read the first three chapters of the first 
book of the Institutio. 



1 68 CHILDREN AT ROME 

sympathy, and displays, especially 
when we consider the age in which it 
was written, a strikingly humane and 
liberal spirit. 



UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME. 

iSmo, Cloth. Gilt Top. 75 Cents. 



Shakespeare's England. By William Winter. 

Gray Days and Gold. By William Winter. 

Old Shrines and Ivy. By William Winter. 

Shadows of the Stage, ist Series. By William 
Winter. 

Shadows of the Stage. 2d Series. By William 
Winter. 

Shadows of the Stage. 3d Series. By William 
Winter. 

Wanderers. Being a collection of poems by William 
Winter. With Portrait. 

George William Curtis. By William Winter. 

The Life and Art of Edwin Booth. By William 
Winter. 

The Novel: What It Is. By F. Marion Crawford. 
With Portrait. 



Parables from Nature. By Mrs. Alfred Gatty. 
New Edition. 2 vols. Each 75 cents. 



The Choice of Books. By Frederic Harrison. 
Cloth, 75 cents. 



UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME. 

i8mo. Cloth. Gilt Top. 75 Cents. 



Art and Humanity in Homer. By William Cran- 
ston Lawton, A.B. (Harv.). 

Types of American Character. By Gamaliel Brad- 
ford, Jr. 

The Function of Criticism at the Present Time. 
By Matthew Arnold. And An Essay on Style. 
By Walter Pater. 

The Journal Intime of Henri Frederic Amiel. Trans- 
lated with an Introduction and Notes by Mrs. 
Humphry Ward. 2 vols. Each 75 cents. 

The Makers of Florence. By Mrs. M. O. W Oli- 
phant. With all the illustrations. 4 vols. Each 
75 cents. 

A Trip to England. By Goldwin Smith, D C L. 

From a New England Hillside. By William Potts. 

Friendship of Nature. By Mabel Osgood Wright. 

Aims of Literary Study. By Hiram Corson. 

The Voice and Spiritual Education. By Hiram 
Corson. 

The Flower of England's Face. By Julia C. R. 
Dorr. 

The Pleasures of Life. By Sir John Lubbock. 



MACMILLAN & CO., 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 



